Jail for parents who transfixed America with 'balloon boy' hoax

The parents who fabricated a story that their young son had been carried away across the skies in a home-made balloon — triggering a huge police rescue mission and captivating television audiences — were given prison sentences yesterday for the hoax.

Richard Heene, 49, who orchestrated the elaborate lie because he and his wife wanted to become reality TV stars, apologised to the court as he was sentenced to 90 days in jail. “I want to apologise to all the rescue workers and the people that got involved in the community,” he said.

Heene was also given four years’ probation and forbidden from profiting from the balloon stunt during that time. His wife, Muyumi Heene, 48, was sentenced to 20 days in jail, although the judge ruled that she may serve her term flexibly to ensure that the couple’s children were cared for.

Judge Stephen Schapanski, in Denver, heeded a demand by prosecutors that Heene should receive the maximum 90-day sentence to deter copycat stunts. He will begin his term on January 11, with Mrs Heene ordered to start her sentence after her husband completes his.
Heene was also ordered to write a letter of apology to the community and the police and aviation agencies who scrambled to “rescue” the boy from the silver balloon as it hurtled though Denver airspace on October 15, unaware that Falcon, 6, was hiding in his parents’ garage.

Authorities will also seek at least $43,000 (£27,000) from the Heenes in reimbursement for the rescue mission, which involved local and state police, the US Forest Service, the National Guard and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).

At one point, as the empty balloon flew high above the Colorado landscape, flights at Denver international airport were grounded. The FAA says that the Heenes will also be subject to a $11,000 fine.

Last month Mr Heene pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant. His wife admitted false reporting. One reason that the couple accepted a plea deal is that Mrs Heene, a Japanese citizen, could have faced deportation if found guilty at a fully contested trial.

The couple sparked a nationwide panic when they called emergency services to report that Falcon had climbed into the saucer-shaped balloon. They claimed that the craft had became untethered, carrying him high into the sky. Authorities, joined by millions of television viewers across the world, tracked the balloon for nearly an hour as it flew through the sky, believing that Falcon was on board.

In fact, under his parents’ instructions, Falcon was hiding at home. The Heenes claimed that they had truly believed that he had been in the balloon.

Suspicions were raised, however, during an interview on CNN when Falcon said: “We did this for a show.” A former business partner told reporters that Mr Heene had been in talks to create his own reality programme and had likely launched the balloon as a publicity stunt.

Bob Heffernan, a lead investigator in the case, said in a letter to the judge that there should be limits on how the Heenes might profit from the hoax, such as through book or TV deals.

“This would hopefully stop the Heenes from being able to exploit their criminal behaviour or their children any more than they already have,” Mr Heffernan wrote in the letter.

“All the while the Heenes were playing us all in hopes of making themselves more marketable.”

No joke

— Education officials in southern India warned teachers in July not to allow stunts that put pupils’ lives at risk after a show at a school in Villupuram, Tamil Nadu, culminated in a motorcyclist laying a wooden plank on top of a young girl and driving over her

— Yaroslav Kudrinsky, a pilot for Aeroflot, allowed his 15-year-old son, Eldar, to take control of an Airbus A310-304 on a flight from Moscow to Hong Kong in 1994. Voice and flight data recorders revealed that the aircraft crashed into a hillside in Siberia, killing all 75 passengers and crew, after the boy disabled the autopilot

Source:The times