These are the facts as we know them, about the gunman from Alabama having kidnapped and still holding a young kindergardener boy, against his will.
The impasse continues into second day Jan 31, 2013
Police have surrounded the underground bunker where retired trucker Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65 has holed up with the kidnapped child.
Police, fire, bomb squad, helicopter, officers from multiple agencies, media and ambulance are present on this dead-end road near a small city of 2,300 souls.
The child is reported to have Asberger’s Syndrome. ed. note: Aspberger’s as a diagnosis, has been on the diagnosis spectrum of autism. AS can cause a child to have trouble with social skills, sensory awareness and to carry some other developmental and physiological lags or unusual preferences. The children however are very able and bright, and very able to learn– which includes learning to relate to others in time. They are sometimes easily led, and often disoriented if a change in routine occurs, which is not unlike many children, but which means often, some extra vigilance by adults re the child’s perceptions and judgments will be useful to insure the child’s sense of safety and security.
The police have lowered a package with the child’s medication in it, into the bunker after his captor agreed to it, it is reported.
The gunman, according to neighbors was known 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.”
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 is described by the small town residents as being “anti-government” and said he was “a long time concern” in the community.
Court records show he was due in court Wednesday morning to face menacing charges that he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump. Neighbor Claudia Davis said he 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.
Yesterday, Dykes, with gun in hand, boarded a stopped school bus 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 dragged the 5-year-old boy off the bus.
The bus driver died.
The other twenty children rushed to the back of the bus when the gunman entered.
Homes on the road had been evacuated yesterday after authorities found what they believed to be a bomb on the property.
SWAT teams are in position on the gunman’s property.
Police negotiators are trying to gain the child’s safe and living release.
Authorities are saying, they have “no reason to believe that the child has been harmed.”
Officers were heard saying they were trying to communicate with Dykes through a PVC pipe into the bunker, which is surmised to be like an underground tornado shelter.
The small town is near the Georgia and Florida borders, a peanut farming region.
The bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, has been proclaimed by town residents, [many of whom are parents who had children on the bus]… a hero who gave his life to protect the 21 students aboard the bus.
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CODA The image is a public domain pix of an underground shelter, not the underground place Dykes is in with the child.