Rescuers describe scene before child was found

PLATTEVILLE - Looking skyward at a dusty rural Weld County intersection as the silver balloon thought to be carrying 6-year-old Falcon Heene floated by a few miles to the north late Thursday morning, Sheriff's Deputy Jared Webb thought he saw something fall from the aircraft.

Webb was standing at the intersection of Weld County roads 41 and 28 about 10 miles east of Platteville, at the edge of what would soon become the center of a broad search area.

Searchers feared the boy had been in a basket attached to the balloon when it fell somewhere to the north of the intersection.

"I have no idea what I saw," he said as the search for Heene began in the early afternoon.

He said he estimated the object may have fallen about six miles north of the intersection, but he said he wasn't sure.

By mid afternoon, searchers from the Platteville-Gilcrest Fire Protection District took off on all-terrain vehicles from that intersection and headed down dusty gravel roads searching for a basket or any sign of a body amid farm fields, oil and gas wells and farmhouses.

Webb said the search area was narrowed to an area bordered by Weld County roads 26 and 32 on the south and north, and Weld County roads 31 and 49 on the west and east.

With only a few more hours of light left in the day, the search was a race against the dark, he said.

"When it gets dark, we're pretty much dead in the water," he said.

He said he wasn't sure if the search would have been called off after dark.

Incident Command, he said, was considering sweeping the entire search area with rescuers lined up like a chain from end-to-end.

But as the ATV-bound rescuers finished searching sections of the search area by vehicle, the call came in that Heene had been found.

This story was written by Bobby Magill, Fort Collins Coloradoan.