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Subscribe to RSSThe family of the Alabama bus driver killed for refusing to hand children over to a gunman is speaking out for the first time. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reports.
An Alabama boy spent his fourth day of captivity in an underground bunker Friday with a survivalist who allegedly killed a school bus driver, but the 5-year-old has received medicine he needs, plus crayons and coloring books.
Hostage negotiators have been talking to the boy's captor through a lengthy PVC pipe, but there was no sign of progress. Police told Alabama media Thursday that the man has been known to stay in the bunker as long as eight days.
The boy, a 5-year-old named Ethan known to his mother as "Love Bug," was apparently unharmed, authorities said Thursday.
His family, which has not spoken publicly since the abduction, was "holding on by a thread," a state representative told the TODAY show. "We are all just hoping this can come to a safe end," Rep. Steve Clouse said.
Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, a Vietnam veteran described by authorities as a loner with anti-government leanings -- and by neighbors as a paranoid menace -- is suspected of taking the boy after storming a school bus Tuesday afternoon. Bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was shot and killed while trying to stop the abduction.
Strangely, the two men had a brief encounter just a day before the siege, a neighbor said.
Kelly Miller, who lives next door to Dykes, told NBC affiliate WSFA that Dykes boarded Poland’s bus Monday and spoke with him. She did not know what was said.
Then on Tuesday morning, before the abduction, Poland gave Dykes a gift of eggs and marmalade to thank him for clearing off the driveway where the bus had to turn around, according to Miller.
Miller, whose sons Jessie and Jackson were able to leave the bus before the shooting, told the station that Dykes called her father to the property fence shortly afterward and gave him Poland’s gifts, saying: "Here. I don't want this."
Hours later, Miller heard shots and screams.
"Within seconds of me grasping what was going on, I knew it was Jim," she told WSFA.
A source close to the investigation said the bunker, which is on Dykes' property and was described by a neighbor as 4 feet long, 6 feet wide and 8 feet deep, was equipped with power, food, television and plenty of supplies. The source said negotiators had gotten medicine, crayons and coloring books to the boy.
Late Thursday, Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said negotiations through the pipe were continuing.
Clouse told reporters that the boy suffered from Asperger's syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but had been able to get his medicine while held captive.
People in the small Alabama town of Midland City, not far from the Florida line, expressed hope that prayer might help. For the negotiators it is a matter of waiting, said Clint Van Zandt, a former chief hostage negotiator for the FBI.
"He doesn't want to hurt the child. He didn't take the child to hurt him," said Van Zandt, an analyst for MSNBC. "The child is simply the means to keep law enforcement from crashing into his bunker right now."
He added: "Time is on the side of the negotiator."
It could still be a long wait. James Arrington, police chief of the nearby town of Pinckard, told The Birmingham News that Dykes has been known to stay in his bunker as long as eight days.
The source told NBC News that the man believed to be Dykes walked onto the bus on Tuesday with a note, demanding that two children be handed over to him. The bus driver refused and was shot and killed.
Clouse said the kidnapping appeared to be random.
Neighbors in Midland City have said they saw Dykes tirelessly digging and working on the bunker. One man said it was protected by several feet of sand on top.
Poland has been hailed as a hero. The county school system said 21 children made it off the bus alive.
The driver's son, Aaron Poland, told NBC News that his father took bullets for the children on his bus as he would have for his own children.
"Every time a child got on my dad's bus, they were no longer their parents', they were his," he said.
Poland's sister, Vicki Upchurch, told NBC station KHQ in Spokane, Wash., that the driver "would have done anything to protect those kids."
Poland and his family grew up in northern Idaho, where much of the family still lives, Upchurch said.
Relatives were planning to travel from Idaho to Alabama for Poland's funeral services this weekend.
"We will get through this," Upchurch said. "My brother was very religious. He had a deep faith."
M. Alex Johnson, Ian Johnston, Matthew DeLuca, Gabe Gutierrez, Isolde Raftery and Alastair Jamieson of NBC News contributed to this report.
RELATED: Son says bus driver in Alabama hostage crisis gave life for 'his children'
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calyps you are rite my friend you are rite
right
your right franky....these people made complaints that the man was a menace and acting weird..what should have been done was a mental health official come out to see what was bothering the man...in this case its a good thing to have gov interference medically...sometimes people are ill and dont realize it and do terrible things...how do we know he isnt a pedifile and harming the child....this isnt gun related...he is just nuts period....if he is older...then it coiuld be anything..alzheimers ..senility or some brain damage....whatever happens they cant leave that little boy in their too long...pray God helps him get through this...and his family...
Maybe some day all mentally ill people will be off our streets and safely put away in a mental institution.
They use to be but Reagan (the great GOP hope) started the policy of closing the mental hospitals and setting up out patient clinics. Yeah, like guys like this are going to show up at an out patient cllinic, right.
Sounds like a prepper on the National Geographic Channel. Who says the media doesn't influence people?
Once the child is in the clear...TAKE OUT THE TRASH! Save the taxpayer the expense of feeding this mentally ill sump hole!
@usvet,
I am a war veteran as well, not sure if you have ever had people trying to kill you but I have and it does change you. Also as a real vet I am really bothered by your comment especially if you are, as you claim, a vet. I agree this person needs to be taken down and arrested, but did you not see that he is a war vet as well? Are you saying that a veteran of war should just be shot as trash and left at that or did you mean to say that he should be taken down and then treated with the laws that he fought for?
Think very clearly before you respond please.
I was going to say spike the food with some kind of sleep drug to knock them both out, but who knows how much food can be stored in a bunker that small. Why not release some non detectible gas?
I should also say that the driver is one of the best hero that I know. I do not know that I or many others can stand up to a gun man in his situation. May be the parents or grand parents of those children have enough courage to act like him protecting their own children.
Why can't they put sleeping gas in the bunker???????
hea courtenay do yo get that they are putting our law enforcment in danger and that is bull@!$%# to they do not need it eather
So, John, should we just leave a 5 year old boy to his own devices on how to get away from his captor? OUR law enforcement is there because they took an oath to protect and serve. And I do believe that is what is being done.
ok stage a lets save a soldier send in helicopeters check ground for minds call this guys name ask if he's alright tell him the calvery is coming
It's obvious we have to separate gun ownership from good people and bad people, but how? Most people today are self centered and wouldn't even help a little old lady cross the street. This is a perfect example. The neighbors knew the man wasn't right but who stepped in to take the man's guns or even help the man. He's a nut job and society failed to help him. They had plenty of red flags. Each neighbor is guilty.
Motive?? I'd say the guy is so obsessed with his shelter and nothing has happened where his plans to be prepared failed. Remember 12/21/12 the world was suppose to end? Maybe he is acting out where he has to use his beloved shelter?
If the countries plans are to take guns away from crazies they better get busy.When there are already so many guns and ammo out there already it's hard to back up. Responsibility starts with everyone. Stop selling your guns under the table. Keep your guns out of reach and away from your kids. If someone in your house is unstable the gun needs removed from the house.
There are no laws that can fix all this. It's up to each person to use their head a little bit more and stop turning it.
Why can't they gas the guy out? Surely there is a gas you can't smell that will put someone to sleep. Another media frenzy that can't wait to give other crazy people ideas. Who cares if their stories are causing more harm than good. They are making money.
I pray and hope the little innocent boy makes it out.
If they try to "gas him out" or do anything that he perceives as a threat, that little boy might not make it out in one piece. This guy has already killed one person.
That gas that doesn't have a smell is carbon monoxide and that would kill them both.
@ mitchel
You can thank the ACLU for those tough laws
Three days to a 5-year-old child seems like forever. Get the child out now!
I am in favor of gun control. but how long is it going to take to get at the root of our problem which is our shabby mental health system? In all the instances we have seen, the perpetrators are well known and have been terrorizing the community for some time or at least acting weird enough that trouble could have been suspected.
If you have never tried to get help for yourself or someone else, you have no idea how bad things are.
Write to your congressman. Tell him to vote for funding for mental health care. If he doesn't, vote him out of office. If you use it, you have the last word. it's called VOTE!!!!!!!
So how's the lack of morals, civility, decency and the disregard for human life exemplified at the highest levels of government working out for everyone?
I hope the boy is returned safely back to his family soon. What is up with all these gun shootings and violence on a daily occurance? My heart goes out to the family waiting for this nightmare to end.
Gets worse everyday... NRA's solution... more guns in a country with a glutt of guns.
and the ACLU says "hey judges & prosecutors, just keep up with the softball prison sentences" After all they have civil rights
Im wondering, now that the captor has gotten to know this child, if the negotiator put a manual pic in his head of how this child is going to feel about him.. that he wouldnt want him to think of him as a monster.... snce the child is still alive surely he has bonded a little with him...
read the article... it said the child was picked randomly.
Senators can take this time calmly explain how the goverment works and how long they have been elected, including the things they have proposed, but the things have also rejected by their own peers and voters. Senators can be a good candidate of the ambassador of government/Congress.
A human being at least has to sleep at some point, and pray that they all sleep. Hope that it will have a non-violent ending and saves all lives.
Sooner than later he will have to come out. When the coward does, pop a cap in his asss!
It sounds like he is disturbed... maybe he did not receive the kind of psychological help he needed when he came back from Vietnam... this country was not very nice to those veterans when they came home... forty years ago.
By the content of your post... you sound like just another tea billy hack.
You sound like a speculative shill so go crawl back under your rock from whence ye came
Since the NRA thinks they own this country (NOT)... what do you suppose their solutions is? A armed guard on every school bus in this country... please... police state here we come!
Hope the little guy makes it out in one piece... his parents must be a mess... I wish for peace to all of them!
@ leftward
So where was law enforcement & the judge in this guy getting bail, without a search of his premises for what he was going to court for in the first place? The reports on this guy and run ins with the law previously, surely the court & law enforcement were not pro active about him at all. hhhmmm
IF Jimmy Lee is taken alive he should be TORTURED TO DEATH.
grow up
Negotiate with him. Give him everything he wants. Get the kid back...............Then kill him.
NObama
You conservatives are unbelievable... Even the murder and kidnapping of children doesn't make you realize that Obama is 100% correct when he says we need to make sure insane people can no longer purchase firearms in the USA anymore.
But no, who do you stick up for: the people who murder and kidnap children, but I'm supposed to think Obama is a bad guy? Cause someone as sick as you conservatives say so, please...
What is wrong with the Al justice system that guy was not arrrested immediatly when he fired at a neighbor. They just gave him notice to appear in court, are you kidding me. In most states when you shoot as someone it is called attempted murder and you end up in jail.
All the crazy right wing Christian states in the USA always stick up for the insane gun owner over decent Americans. And if he is white and an NRA member then he can do whatever he wants.
and you live in what universe?
What an awful story. I hope this child gets out alive. After all, his captor has already killed one innocent person. I guess the best anyone can do is wait out the situation. Eventually, the captor is going to have to come out, so a lot of patience is what the situation calls for. My heart goes out to the little boy's family.
Its pretty stupid to blame gun nuts. Where I grew up it was not uncommon for me or any other student to take a shotgun or even a high powered riffle to school, on the school bus with a note from that we was going home with our buddy to do some hunting it was expected of us. Thats how most of our families ate up in those hills. The point is not every one who owns a gun is a nut. As a boy I (as was almost every onein that region) taugt to stand our ground. The best way for two men to solve their problems is to fight them out with honor!!! Not guns!!!! I personally have no need for an assault riffle and only own guns to use for hunting. To me they are not a weapon they are tools. However, Edmund Burke once said "all that is neccasery for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." That being said, let me share some old country wisdom that I learned as a child. We had a rooster once, it was a mean rooster! It killed all the other roosters and several hens. It started to attack people, hell it attacked every thing that moved. One day while that rooster was strutting around his turf with that chest stuck out spoiling for a fight he picked a fight with my little ole granny. Granny knew just how to fix that damn chicken! That rooster never attacked nothing else. My point is that the law failed, but why did the community allow this man to take it this far. Let some one beat my dog todeath with a pipe, point a gun at my kids, or threaten my family in any way. The law gets one chance to deal with it. Otherwise you antigun nuts can have my guns. I have axes, hatchets, knives, shovels, hoes, ropes, and all sorts of other things that I am more than willing to use to gert the job done. Just ask my ex naighbors dog that bit my little girl while I just happened to be splitting rails with an ax.
Country Boy, I agree entirely with your post. I hunted for years, I'm not anti 2nd Amendment. I'm against arming people who think nothing of using his gun to take away MY right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.