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5 y/o held hostage by nutjob...
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Dykes was known around the neighborhood as a menacing figure who neighbors said 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 firearm.
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who neighbors said once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe
Time for EPA to get involved?"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Thomas Jefferson, 1776
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MIDLAND CITY, Ala. — More than three days after he allegedly shot a school bus driver dead, grabbed a kindergartner and slipped into an underground bunker, Jimmy Lee Dykes was showing no signs Friday of turning himself over to police.
Speaking into a 4-inch-wide ventilation pipe leading to the bunker, hostage negotiators have tried to talk the 65-year-old retired truck driver into freeing the 5-year-old boy. One local official said the child had been crying for his parents.
Dykes is accused of pulling the boy from a school bus Tuesday and killing the driver who tried to protect the 21 youngsters aboard. The gunman and the boy were holed up in a small room on his property that authorities likened to a tornado shelter, something common to this area of the South.
"The three past days have not been easy on anybody," Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said at a news briefing late Thursday. He said authorities were communicating with the suspect, and their primary goal was to get the boy home safely.
"There's no reason to believe the child has been harmed," he added.
There were signs that the standoff could continue for some time.
James Arrington, police chief of the neighboring town of Pinckard, said the shelter was about 4 feet underground, with about 6-by-8 feet of floor space and a PVC pipe that negotiators were speaking through.
A state legislator said the shelter has electricity, food and TV. The police chief said the captor has been sleeping and told negotiators that he has spent long periods in the shelter before.
"He will have to give up sooner or later because (authorities) are not leaving," Arrington said. "It's pretty small, but he's been known to stay in there eight days."
Midland City Mayor Virgil Skipper said he has been briefed by law enforcement agents and has visited with the boy's parents.
"He's crying for his parents," he said. "They are holding up good. They are praying and asking all of us to pray with them."
Republican Rep. Steve Clouse, who represents the Midland City area, said he visited the boy's mother Thursday and that she is "hanging on by a thread."
"Everybody is praying with her for the boy," he said.
Clouse said the mother told him that the boy has Asperger's syndrome, an autism-like disorder, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Police have been delivering medication to him through the pipe, he added.
The normally quiet red clay road leading to the bunker teemed Friday with more than a dozen police cars and trucks, a fire truck, a helicopter, officers from multiple agencies and news media near Midland City, population 2,300.
Police vehicles have come and gone steadily for hours from the command post, a small church taken over for that use
Early Friday, activity picked up when a team in military-style uniforms, many toting weapons, got out of a big van in the pre-dawn chill and moved into a staging area. One appeared to be dog handler.
But after a chilly night, the activity of law enforcement appeared to slow toward dawn though a mobile command center remained starkly lit with bright lights. A small aircraft with blinking lights traced wide circles high overhead for hours. An ambulance was parked nearby.
Dykes was known around the neighborhood as a menacing figure who neighbors said 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 firearm.
The chief confirmed that Dykes held anti-government views, as described by multiple neighbors: "He's against the government — starting with Obama on down."
"He doesn't like law enforcement or the government telling him what to do," he said. "He's just a loner."
Authorities say the gunman boarded a stopped school bus Tuesday afternoon and demanded two boys between 6 and 8 years old. When the driver tried to block his way, the gunman shot him several times and took the 5-year-old boy off the bus.
The bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was hailed by locals as a hero who gave his life to protect the pupils on his bus.
No motive has been discussed by investigators, but the police chief said the FBI had evidence suggesting it could be considered a hate crime. Federal authorities have not released any details about the standoff or the investigation. The mayor said he hasn't seen anything tying together Dykes' anti-government views and the allegations against him.
Dykes had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump. Neighbor 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.
The son, James Davis Jr., believes Tuesday's shooting was connected to the court date. "I believe he thought I was going to be in court and he was going to get more charges than the menacing, which he deserved, and he had a bunch of stuff to hide and that's why he did it."
Neighbors described a number of other run-ins with Dykes in the time since he moved to this small rural town near the Georgia and Florida borders, a region known for peanut farming.
A neighbor directly across the street, Brock Parrish, said Dykes usually wore overalls and glasses and his posture was hunched-over. He said Dykes usually drove a run-down "creeper" van with some of the windows covered in aluminum foil.
Parrish often saw him digging in his yard, as if he was preparing to lay down a driveway or building foundation. He lived in a small camping trailer there and patrolled his lawn at night, walking from corner to corner with a flashlight and an assault rifle.
Court records showed Dykes was arrested in Florida in 1995 for improper exhibition of a weapon, but the misdemeanor was dismissed. The circumstances of the arrest were not detailed in his criminal record. He was also arrested for marijuana possession in 2000.
Associated Press writers Phillip Rawls in Midland City, Bob Johnson in Montgomery, Ala., and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
Prayers sent out to the family of deceased and parents of the kiddo.
This is sickening../ ____ _ _\.
(]]]_ o _[[[)
\o_FORD_o/
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God closes doors no man can open, God opens doors no man can close. Revelations 3:7-8
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./ ____ _ _\.
(]]]_ o _[[[)
\o_FORD_o/
|__|.....|__|
God closes doors no man can open, God opens doors no man can close. Revelations 3:7-8
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Originally posted by Ted View PostAbout the best ending you can hope for. The kid that is physically unharmed, and a dead suspect that will not spend taxpayer dollars rotting in prison. I just feel sorry for the mental wellbeing of the child.99 Mustang Project JSTA2V
going from really slow to just alittle slow
2013 Focus ST the daily cruising the 4 banger
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Originally posted by Forever_frost View PostDo you realize how hard it is to keep updated on this board from my bunker? This damned negotiator keeps yammering in my ear and I have a kid screaming in the other one.
Nice../ ____ _ _\.
(]]]_ o _[[[)
\o_FORD_o/
|__|.....|__|
God closes doors no man can open, God opens doors no man can close. Revelations 3:7-8
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