MIDLAND CITY, Ala. – More than three days after he allegedly shot dead a school bus driver, grabbed a 5-year-old child and slipped into an underground bunker in the rural U.S., Jimmy Lee Dykes was showing no signs Friday of turning himself over to police.
Hostage negotiators spoke into a narrow ventilation pipe leading into the bunker, trying to talk the 65-year-old, said to hold anti-government views, into freeing the boy. One local official said the child had been crying for his parents.
Dykes, described by neighbors as threatening and violent, is accused of pulling the boy at random from the bus Tuesday and killing the driver who tried to protect the 21 children aboard. The gunman and the boy were holed up in a small underground room on his property that authorities likened to a tornado shelter, not uncommon in the rural South.
A state lawmaker said the shelter has electricity, food and TV, and there were signs that the standoff along a dirt road could continue for some time.
"The three past days have not been easy on anybody," Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said late Thursday. He said authorities' primary goal was to get the boy home safely.
"There's no reason to believe the child has been harmed," Olson added.
James Arrington, police chief of the neighboring town of Pinckard, 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 visited the boy's parents.
"He's crying for his parents," Skipper said. "They are holding up good. They are praying and asking all of us to pray with them."
Lawmaker Steve Clouse said the boy's mother told him her child 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 said.
Activity around the bunker picked up early Friday when a team in military-style uniforms, many with weapons, got out of a van and moved into a staging area. One appeared to be dog handler.
Dykes was known in 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 an assault rifle.
Arrington 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," the police chief 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,Charles Albert Poland Jr., tried to block his way, the gunman shot him several times and took the 5-year-old boy off the 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.
Dykes had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month. Neighbor Claudia Davis said he yelled and fired shots at her, her son and her baby grandson over damage Dykes claimed their 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."
A neighbor directly across the street, Brock Parrish, said Dykes usually wore overalls and glasses, and his posture was hunched-over. He said Dykes lived in a small camping trailer 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.
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