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| Heavily armed men move away from the suspects home at the scene of a Dale County hostage scene in Midland City, Ala. on Wednesday Jan. 30, 2013. Authorities were locked in a standoff Wednesday with a gunman authorities say on Tuesday intercepted a school bus, killed the driver, snatched a 6-year-old boy and retreated into a bunker at his home in Alabama. |
MIDLAND CITY,
Ala. (AP) -- A gunman holed up in a bunker with a 6-year-old hostage
kept law officers at bay Wednesday in an all-night, all-day standoff
that began when he killed a school bus driver and dragged the boy away,
authorities said.
SWAT teams took up positions
around the gunman's rural property and police negotiators tried to win
the kindergartener's safe release.
The gunman,
identified by neighbors as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired truck
driver, was known around the neighborhood as a menacing figure who once
beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for
setting foot on his property and patrolled his yard at night with a
flashlight and a shotgun.
He had been
scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning to answer charges he shot
at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump.
The
standoff along a red dirt road began on Tuesday afternoon, after a
gunman boarded a stopped school bus filled with children in the town of
Midland City, population 2,300. Sheriff Wally Olsen said the man shot
the bus driver when he refused to hand over a 6-year-old child. The
gunman then took the boy away.
"As far as we
know there is no relation at all. He just wanted a child for a hostage
situation," said Michael Senn, a pastor who helped comfort the
traumatized children after the attack.
The bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was hailed by locals as a hero who gave his life to protect 21 students.
Authorities
gave no details on the standoff, and it was unclear if Dykes made any
demands from his underground bunker, which resembled a tornado shelter.
The
sheriff said in a brief statement Wednesday evening that negotiators
continued talking to the suspect and "at this time we have no reason to
believe that the child has been harmed."
About
50 vehicles from federal, state and local agencies were clustered at
the end of a dirt road near where Dykes lived in a small travel trailer.
Nearby homes were evacuated after authorities found what was believed
to be a bomb on his property.
State Rep. Steve
Clouse, who met with authorities and visited the boy's family, said the
bunker had food and electricity, and the youngster was watching TV. He
said law enforcement authorities were communicating with the gunman, but
he had no details on how.
At one point,
authorities lowered medicine into the bunker for the boy after his
captor agreed to it, Clouse said. The lawmaker said he did not know what
the medicine was for or whether it was urgently needed.
Chris
Voss, a former international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI, said
negotiators at the scene should remain patient and calm, resisting the
urge to force a quick resolution.
"Getting
what you want is not the same as getting even," said Voss, whose firm,
the Black Swan Group, now consults on high-stakes negotiations.
"Flooding the zone will not save lives."
Mike
and Patricia Smith, who live across the street from Dykes and whose two
children were on the bus when the shooting happened, said their
youngsters had a run-in with him about 10 months ago.
"My
bulldogs got loose and went over there," Patricia Smith said. "The
children went to get them. He threatened to shoot them if they came
back."
"He's very paranoid," her husband said. "He goes around in his yard at night with a flashlight and shotgun."
Patricia
Smith said her children told her what happened on the bus: Two other
children had just been dropped off and the Smith children were next.
Dykes stepped onto the bus and grabbed the door so the driver couldn't
close it. Dykes told the driver he wanted two boys, 6 to 8 years old,
without saying why.
According to Smith, Dykes
started down the aisle of the bus and the driver put his arm out to
block him. Dykes fired four shots at Poland with a handgun, Smith said.
"He did give his life, saving children," Mike Smith said.
Patricia
Smith said her daughter, a high school senior, began corralling the
other children and headed for the back of the bus while Dykes and the
driver were arguing. Later, Smith's son ran inside his house, telling
his mother: "The crazy man across the street shot the bus driver and Mr.
Poland won't wake up."
Patricia Smith ran
over to the bus and saw the driver slumped over in his seat. Her
daughter used another child's cellphone to call 911.
Another
neighbor, Ronda Wilbur, said Dykes beat her 120-pound dog with a lead
pipe for coming onto his side of the dirt road. The dog died a week
later.
"He said his only regret was he didn't
beat him to death all the way," Wilbur said. "If a man can kill a dog,
and beat it with a lead pipe and brag about it, it's nothing until it's
going to be people."
Dykes had been scheduled
to appear in court Wednesday to face a charge of menacing some neighbors
as they drove by his house weeks ago. Claudia Davis said he yelled and
fired shots at her, her son and her baby grandson over damage Dykes
claimed their pickup truck did to a makeshift speed bump in the dirt
road. No one was hurt.
"Before this happened, I
would see him at several places and he would just stare a hole through
me," Davis said. "On Monday I saw him at a laundromat and he seen me
when I was getting in my truck, and he just stared and stared and stared
at me."
