The boy in the balloon

From Tom Piccirilii:

Hey Ed: so an experimental helium balloon built by a storm chaser in his backyard took off with his six-year-old son inside. Family lives five minutes from us. Talk about life mirroring fiction. It's my story "Between the Dark and the Daylight"!

Balloon finally landed after two and a half hours in the air and having traveled something like 100 miles, sometimes as high as 10,000 feet. Kid wasn't in it. The news copters started following within 20 minutes of it lifting...