Boy, 5, held hostage by gunman in bus shooting

A standoff in rural Alabama went into a second full day as police surrounded an underground bunker where authorities said a retired truck driver was holding a 5-year-old hostage he grabbed off a school bus after shooting the driver dead.

A normally quiet dirt road was teeming with activity around the siege that began late on Tuesday. More than a dozen police cars and trucks, a fire truck, a helicopter, officers from multiple agencies, media and at least one ambulance crowded the stretch where the dead-end residential road branches off a US highway near Midland City, which has a population 2,300.

The boy being held was watching TV and getting medication sent from home, according to state Rep Steve Clouse, who met with authorities and visited the boy’s family. Clouse said the bunker had food and electricity.

Authorities lowered medicine into the bunker for the boy after his captor agreed to it, Clouse said.

The gunman, identified by neighbours as Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, was known around the neighbourhood 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.

Authorities say the gunman boarded a stopped school bus on 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 a 5-year-old boy off the bus.

Dykes had been scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday to face a charge of threatening some neighbours with a gun as they drove by his house weeks ago.

Homes on the road had been evacuated earlier after authorities found what they believed to be a bomb on the property. SWAT teams took up positions around the gunman’s property and police negotiators tried to win the child’s safe release.

The situation remained unchanged for hours as negotiators talked to the suspect, Alabama State Trooper Charles Dysart said.

Earlier in the day, Sheriff Wally Olson said that authorities had “no reason to believe that the child has been harmed.”

Local TV station WDHN said officers are trying to communicate with Dykes through a PVC pipe leading into the shelter.

Authorities gave no details of the standoff, and it was unclear if Dykes made any demands from the bunker, which some officials described as being like an underground tornado shelters.

The bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr, 66, was hailed by locals as a hero who gave his life to protect the 21 students aboard the bus.