Balloon Boy Family Facing Charges

On Thursday, I was sitting at my desk when my boss came by and told me that a six year old boy had somehow gotten into his father's homemade hot air balloon and taken off.  I had two thoughts, how could they possibly get him down, and who in the hell would have a balloon that could take off inflated and unattended where a child could get into it?

A couple hours later, I heard that the balloon had crash landed but that the boy was not in the basket.  Like many, I immediately thought that maybe he had fallen out of the balloon to his death.  In the back of my mind I held a sliver of hope that perhaps the boy had not been a passenger in the balloon after all.

By now, we all know that Falcon Heene had been hiding in a box in the attic of their house.  The family, which had appeared in the reality TV show "Wife Swap," immediately hit the morning talk show circuit.  On the Larry King show, young Falcon may have let it slip when he said "You said we did this for a show."

Now the Larimer County sheriff says the parents are facing misdemeanor charges of filing a false police report.  He also says that he is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to see if additional federal charges could be filed as the misdemeanor charges don't measure up to the severity of the situation.So now it looks pretty clear that it was all a hoax.  Turns out the father, Richard Heene, feels he should be famous and it was all part of trying to develop his own reality television show.

What a piece of shit this guy is!  I certainly hope that federal charges can be filed and that they are felony charges.  If this is true, he deserves to go to jail for a long time in my opinion.  He definitely should be held responsible for the cost of all the resources that were used to try to save his son.  What kind of dirt bag would ever suggest, even knowing it to be a hoax, that their child was in mortal danger?

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