MIDLAND CITY, AL (WSFA) -- An Alabama child remains the victim of a hostage situation, having spent hours in an underground bunker with a man who took him from a school bus Tuesday afternoon after fatally wounding the driver.
The situation started around 3:40pm Tuesday in the small town of Midland City in Dale County.
The gunman, identified by neighbors as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired truck driver, was known as "the crazy man" of the neighborhood, a paranoid and combative man 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.
The Dale County Sheriff's Department and a multitude of other law enforcement, including surrounding police departments, Alabama State Troopers, a SWAT team, and FBI agents converged on the community in the aftermath of the shooting and kidnapping.
As of 11:00pm, authorities were communicating with the suspect via a PVC pipe connected to the bunker. The child is said to be "okay", but authorities remain cautious, calling it a "delicate" situation.
Read more at WSFA's website.
