The 6-year-old Colorado boy thought to have floated off in a homemade balloon has raised questions whether it might have been a family stunt.During a live interview on CNN, Falcon Heene said he heard his family calling his name as he hid in the rafters of their garage. At the time, there was a frantic effort to bring down the balloon safely.Falcon’s father asked, “Why didn’t you come out?” The boy answered, “You had said we did this for a show.”
Oct. 15: Falcon Heene is shown with his father, Richard, outside the family's home in Fort Collins, Colo.
Richard Heene adamantly has denied the notion that the whole thing was a big publicity stunt, when asked by reporters.”That’s horrible after the crap we just went through. No,” he said.Before the interview, a local sheriff in Fort Collins, Colo., said there was no evidence of a hoax.
The Heene Family.
The boys’ parents — Richard Heene and his wife, Mayumi — are storm chasers who appeared twice in the ABC reality show “Wife Swap.”And in addition to attaining a level of reality TV fame on the series, Richard Heene has his own amateur video series on YouTube in which he sizes up various pop culture phenomena.For each topic, from the Loch Ness monster to Britney Spears‘ chest, he asks the question “fake or real?”
The balloon lands in a Colorado field.
On Thursday, Heene’s family became the center of a real-life drama that raised the same question, as Colorado authorities feared his son was trapped in a runaway flying balloon only to discover after the balloon crashed that the boy had been hiding, safe at home the whole time.Mystified authorities had launched a ground search for the boy after the flying balloon he was believed to have been trapped in crashed without him inside. The mystery was solved later when the boy, Falcon Heene, came out of hiding to see his mother, Mayumi Heene, who was sitting on the couch.
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