A six-year-old boy has been found hiding in a cardboard box in his family's garage after being feared aboard a homemade helium balloon that hurtled 50 miles through the sky on live television.
The discovery marked a bizarre end to a saga that started when the giant silvery balloon floated away from the family's yard this morning, sparking a frantic rescue operation that involved military helicopters and briefly halted some departures from Denver International Airport.
Then, more than two hours after the balloon gently touched down in a field with no sign of the boy, Sheriff Jim Alderden turned to reporters during a news conference, gave a thumbs up and said six-year-old Falcon Heene was "at the house".
"Apparently he's been there the whole time," he said.
The boy's father, Richard Heene, said the family was tinkering with the balloon and that he scolded Falcon for getting inside a compartment on the craft.
He said Falcon's brother saw him inside the compartment and that's why they thought he was aboard the balloon when it launched.
But the boy had fled to the garage, climbing a pole into the rafters and hiding in a cardboard box, at some point after the scolding. He was never in the balloon during its two-hour, 50-mile journey through two counties. "I yelled at him. I'm really sorry I yelled at him," Heene said, choking up and hugging Falcon to him during a news conference.
"I was in the attic and he scared me because he yelled at me," Falcon said. "That's why I went in the attic."
Heene said the balloon wasn't tethered properly, and "it was a mishap. I'm not going to lay blame on anybody".
The boys' parents are storm chasers who appeared twice in the ABC reality show Wife Swap, most recently in March.
Richard Heene adamantly denied the notion that the whole thing was a big publicity stunt. "That's horrible after the crap we just went through. No."
The sheriff said he would meet with investigators on Friday to see if the case warranted further investigation.
"As this point there's no indication that this was a hoax," Alderden said.
The flying saucer-like craft tipped precariously at times before gliding to the ground in a dirt field 12 miles northeast of Denver International Airport. Sheriff's deputies secured it to keep it in place, tossing shovelfuls of dirt on one edge.
With the child nowhere in sight, investigators searched the balloon's path. Several people reported seeing something fall from the craft while it was in the air, and yellow crime-scene tape was placed around the home.
Neighbour Bob Licko, 65, said he was leaving home when he heard commotion in the backyard of the family. He said he saw two boys on the roof with a camera, commenting about their brother.
"One of the boys yelled to me that his brother was way up in the air," Licko said.
Licko said the boy's mother seemed distraught and that the boy's father was running around the house.
Licko said he didn't believe any hoax was involved.
"Based on what I witnessed in the backyard in the morning with the parents, I don't think that's the case," Licko said. "They're better actors than I thought they were if that's the case."
In a 2007 interview with The Denver Post, Richard Heene described becoming a storm chaser after a tornado ripped off a roof where he was working as a contractor and said he once flew a plane around Hurricane Wilma's perimeter in 2005.
Pursuing bad weather was a family activity with the children coming along as the father sought evidence to prove his theory that rotating storms create their own magnetic fields.
Although Richard said he has no specialized training, they had a computer tracking system in their car and a special motorcycle.
While the balloon was airborne, Colorado Army National Guard sent a UH-58 Kiowa helicopter and a Black Hawk UH-60 to try to rescue the boy, possibly by lowering someone to the balloon. They also were working with pilots of ultralight aircraft on the possibility of putting weights on the homemade craft to weigh it down.
Alderden said he didn't have an estimate of how much the search cost. Capt. Troy Brown said the Black Hawk helicopter was in the air for nearly three hours, and the Kiowa helicopter was airborne for about one hour. The Black Hawk costs about US$4,600 an hour to fly, and the Kiowa is US$700 an hour, Brown said.
Col. Chris Petty, one of the pilots aboard the Black Hawk, said he was thrilled the boy was OK.
Asked what he would say to the six-year-old if he saw him, Petty said: "I'm really glad you're alive, I'm very thankful, but I'd sure like to know the rest of the story."
The episode led to a brief shutdown of northbound departures from one of the nation's busiest airports between 1:00pm and 1:15pm MDT, said Lyle Burrington, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association representative at the Federal Aviation Administration's radar centre in Longmont, Colo. The balloon was about 15 miles northwest of the airport at that time.
Before the departure shutdown, controllers had been routing planes away from the balloon, Burrington said.
The Poudre School District in Fort Collins, where the boys attend, did not have classes for elementary schools Thursday because of a teacher work day.
Jason Humbert said he was in a field checking on an oil well when he found himself surrounded by police who had been chasing the balloon.
"It looked like an alien spaceship you see in those old, old movies. You know, those black-and-white ones. It came down softly," Humbert said. "I asked a police officer if the boy was OK and he said there was no one in it."
Watch an interview with Richard and Mayumi Heene.
AP