Colorado Boy Safe After Flying Saucer Scare

Oct. 15, 2009 — -- The father of a 6-year-old boy whose disappearance held the country in thrall when it was believed he was trapped in a 20-foot "homemade flying saucer" that floated out of control across Colorado for two hours, said "my legs got weak" when his son later turned up at home -- alive and unharmed.

"I couldn't even walk from one room to the next," Richard Heene said as he clutched his formerly missing son and spoke to reporters. "Right now, my legs are weak and it's kind of why I want to go back and sit down. I'm out of energy right now and I can barely speak."

Heene and law enforcement officials said Falcon Heene, 6, of Fort Collins, Colo., was found hiding in a cardboard box in an attic above the family garage, where he had retreated after his father scolded him for fiddling with the experimental aircraft tethered in the family yard.

"I was in the attic and he scared me because he yelled at me," Falcon Heene told reporters. "That's why I went in the attic."

"I'm really sorry I yelled at him," Richard Heene said, standing with his wife and three sons. "He scared the heck out of us."

But even as Heene celebrated his son's homecoming, the amateur scientist -- whose family's storm-chasing adventures have been detailed on local and national news and entertainment shows -- fended off questions about how the emergency developed and how his son could have gone undiscovered in hiding for so long.

Based on the eyewitness account of one of Falcon's older brothers, Brad, who told authorities he saw the 6-year-old stow himself in the balloon's basket just before it broke free from its tether and took off, authorities initially believed the boy was aboard the balloon, and followed the Mylar aircraft approximately 50 miles.

Local and federal officials tracked the balloon's path as television helicopters circled the vessel and TV stations broadcast it's flight live.

When reached at the family home before the aircraft was recovered on the ground, Richard Heene was crying and said he was not watching television images of the silver "low altitude vehicle" flying over the Colorado plains. He said he was praying and waiting for an update from police.