Balloon Boy's Parents to Plead Guilty to Hoaxing America's Cable News Personalities
Richard and Mayumi Heene, the parents of that cute vomiting boy who did not get lost in the air in a balloon, will plead guilty tomorrow to charges that they concocted the story in order to become famous, which happened.
According to a statement issued by the couple's attorney, Richard will plead to attempting to influence a public servant—a felony—and Mayumi will plead to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report. Prosecutors, the statement said, have agreed to recommend a sentence of probation, meaning no jail time. According to CNN, prosecutors couldn't be reached to confirm the deal.
The deal was precipitated, the Heene's attorney said, by prosecutors' threat to deport Mayumi, who is a Japanese national. From the statement:
It is supremely ironic that law enforcement has expressed such grave concern over the welfare of the children, but it was ultimately the threat of taking the children's mother from the family and deporting her to Japan which fueled this deal.
It's even more supremely ironic that the attorney for a woman who deliberately threw her child into the middle of a self-generated media shitstorm and commanded him to lie and watched him throw up on TV so she could be on TV more is calling prosecutors' legitimate concern for that child's welfare under her care "ironic."
We can only hope that the district attorney bars any reality TV deals as a condition of probation.