6-year-old boy missing after balloon lands in Colorado - CNN.com
(CNN) -- Authorities are searching for a box that was attached to a balloon set loose by a 6-year-old boy Thursday from his family's home, CNN affiliate WUSA reported.
The balloon landed south of Prospect Springs, Colorado, on Thursday afternoon.
Parents Richard and Mayumi Heene were featured on the 100th episode of the ABC program "Wife Swap."
Several media outlets offered to help track the balloon with their helicopters, sheriff's spokeswoman says.
A sibling said he saw the boy, identified as Falcon Heene, get into the craft Thursday morning, authorities said.
Neither the boy nor the box were with the craft when it made a soft landing near Keenesburg, about 60 miles from its starting point, Fort Collins, at 1:35 p.m. (3:35 p.m. ET).
People across the world watched Thursday as the homemade helium balloon soared 7,000 feet over eastern Colorado for more than an hour and a half.
But the fate of the boy remained unclear.
"At this point, we are thinking that he did not fall out of the balloon and is somewhere on the ground," Larimer County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Eloise Campanella said. "The basket itself was not breached. It does not look like he fell out of it, but again, this is all conjecture."
Campanella said authorities are searching the neighborhood for the boy.
"I'm very confident we will find him. I think it's a matter of him being a little scared," she said. "Maybe he's not ready to be found."
Falcon's parents, science enthusiasts Richard and Mayumi Heene, were featured on the 100th episode of ABC's prime-time program "Wife Swap" in March, ABC said.
According to the network's Web site, the Heene family "devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm."
The dome-shaped balloon, about 20 feet long and 5 feet high, appeared to be a Mylar-coated helium balloon, similar to a party balloon.
It had been tethered to the boy's family home, the Larimer County Sheriff's Department said. The boy got into the craft Thursday morning and undid the rope anchoring it.
Before the balloon touched the ground, fears that the boy could be riding in the soaring vessel prompted the Colorado Air National Guard to launch a rescue mission Thursday afternoon to see if the agency could use a helicopter to attach a cable to the runaway balloon and steer it to safety, a spokesman said.
Officials could not immediately confirm how fast the balloon was going while airborne.
Marc Friedland, the family's next-door neighbor, said he saw Richard Heene working on the giant Mylar balloon in the backyard.
"Basically, the whole family was out there and they were working with it," he said. "When I came back is when I found out that the event happened."
He said the aircraft was intended to hover around 20 feet in the air and was not intended to carry people.
"Obviously, something went wrong with that."
Friedland described his neighbors as "a great family."
"They're unusual, yes, of course. He's sort of a scientist-slash-inventor. They're storm chasers -- they go after tornadoes, hurricanes, things like that," he said.
"He's a great kid," Friedland said of Falcon. "We see him a lot and they come over and they're always friendly."
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