A Canadian man says the movie "Up" inspired him to tie over 100 helium balloons to his lawn chair and float about a mile into the air before parachuting down. CBSN's Anne-Marie Green discusses his arrest on charges of mischief.
It’s illegal in the US too. You can’t be up that high or even launch model rockets that high technically. There’s airplanes that high and if that flight he talked about had hit him or the balloons he might have taken the whole plane down
Prisoner: so, what are you in for. Canadian guy: having balloons float me up into the sky while sitting in a lawn chair that's attached to the balloons. Prisoner: what?
Aaron Peavler/Geomodelrailroader Railroad Photography no he didn’t! Where did you hear he got 20 years in jail? He killed himself a few years after this he never went to jail.
In 1967 when I was 26 I tied several hundred balloons to a lawn chair and flew over 150 miles across Nebraska almost into Iowa from my parents farm. I was barley 90 pounds then. I used those small party balloons so I needed a lot of them. My uncle owned a store and he would regularly give me packages of balloons as birthday gifts. I had lots of packages of them over the years which gave me the idea. It was by far the most dangerous thing I ever did. First off I had no means of landing. No parachute only a knife to cut a few balloon strings to lower my altitude. I probably got up to 14,000 feet. At that altitude the balloons started popping which at that point I thought I would die. Enough popped where I slowly descended and had a bit of a hard landing in a field. My parents didn’t know about it because they were gone when I did it. I hitch hiked home after that.
“Why was he arrested?” Because his behaviors were immature, selfish, and dangerous. If any mistakes were made, his body could have harmed or killed other people (if he fell on them). All the balloons and whatnot can be considered pollution and probably harmed the ecosystem. His body and/or stupid contraption could have downed a plane in many different ways, especially since he was flying in comercial air space. His body and/or contraption could have harmed someone’s property as well (plummeted through someone’s roof ir cruising their car). The threat his body poses as a plummeting projectile is especially large due to him being overweight as well. In short, this is reckless endangerment and this stupid man risked the lives of hundreds just to feel special and get attention. It’s incredibly selfish and the fact he’s doing that dumb smile and showing pride is even more insulting because it shows he doesn’t even realize how much of a danger he is to other people. He should be ashamed that he did something so stupid, dangerous, and reckless.
They were linient on him with just one count insread of 1 count for each balloon. What if a jet finds the chair in the sky and sucks it into the engine? Wooops is ok to say?
Its quite telling from the commentators scratching their head as to why he was arrested. How self-centered do you have to be to not understand your actions could impact something/someone beyond yourself. If there are no consequences, why wouldn't more idiots be even more reckless.
