Search On for Balloon's Missing Box

No sign of boy; adventurous family was on Wife Swap
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 15, 2009 4:15 PM CDT

A troubling twist in the search for 6-year-old Falcon Heene, thought to have floated away in his father's homemade balloon near Denver: He may have crawled into a box attached to the bottom of the balloon before it accidentally lifted off from his family's back yard. That box wasn't attached to the craft when it touched down about 3:30pm, raising fears that it fell off during the nearly 3-hour-long flight, reports the AP.

More details, meanwhile, are emerging about the Heene family of Fort Collins, which once appeared on ABC's Wife Swap. A note on the show's website reads: "When the Heene family aren't chasing storms, they 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." Dad Richard told a Colorado paper back then that the experiments may sound dangerous, but "my family is never put in harm's way." (More Falcon Heene stories.)

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