6-year-old boy is floating away

Kidding aside, you could see a tether still attached to the balloon when it was still in the air. It's possible the kid wasn't inside the box but was hanging from the tether and lost his grip.

 

I've already seen the family's home address and phone number circulating on some web forums. They are about to get more attention than they ever wanted, I suspect.

 

Officials (whoever they are) now believe the kid was in the attached compartment which is now missing.

Shit.

 

seeing how small the thing actually was - and figuring the kid was probably 50 pounds, I think they knew he couldn't have been inside.

 

This whole story is making me sick to my stomach.

 

They seem more confident the boy will be found alive, unless I am reading this wrong:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/15/colorado.boy.balloon/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

A homemade balloon that was untethered Thursday by a 6-year-old boy from his parents' Colorado home was empty when it landed, authorities said.

The fate of the boy, identified as Falcon Heene, was unclear Thursday after the balloon traveled from Fort Collins to south of Prospect Springs, near Colorado Springs.

A sibling said he saw the boy get into the craft Thursday morning, raising concerns that the boy may have fallen out of it, authorities said earlier.

"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." Watch balloon land »

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."

 

That quote was from about an hour ago, after it landed but before reports of the bottom basket. The basket itself was not breached...but the part that was connected to it is missing now.

I'd consider those old quotes.

 

You got a Heene in there?

 

Obviously the father knows the construction of the thing. If he's saying, 'Oh God, there was a box attached, where the hell is it?' and the brother is saying the kid was in the box, (all per msnbc) that's a problem.

 

OK, I have to go run errands. I think 200 people from this site know my cell phone number. If ONE of you could text me when the kid is found, that would be fantastic.

 

Damn. I am full of fail. I clicked on the story and it said updated three minutes ago. I thought it was new and that there was hope for a positive ending.