Five-year-old hostage rescued after week long stand-off
Police officers storm an underground bunker in Alabama where a five-year-old boy had been held hostage for nearly a week, rescuing the child and shooting the boy’s captor dead.
Negotiations between police and 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes (pictured above) broke down after a week, and the FBI’s Steve Richardson said that officers believed the boy was in imminent danger when they decided to storm the bunker.
Dykes was accused of killing a bus driver and snatching the five-year-old boy from the bus, before fleeing with his hostage to an underground bunker,
The child, who officials said has Asperger’s syndrome, was taken to a hospital in nearby Dothan.
At a news conference on Monday night, authorities declined to elaborate on how they had observed Dykes or on how he died because of the ongoing investigation. However, an official in Midland City, citing information from law enforcement, said that police officers had shot Dykes. The official requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly about the investigation.
Daryle Hendry, who lives around 500 metres from where Dykes’ bunker was located, said he heard a boom Monday afternoon, followed by what sounded like a gunshot, all around the time officials said they stormed the bunker.
Authorities said that Dykes gunned down 66-year-old bus driver Albert Poland Junior before taking the boy from the bus.Poland, who was buried Sunday, was hailed as a hero for protecting the other nearly two-dozen children on board from harm.
“This man was a true hero who was willing to give up his life so others might live,” Governor Robert Bentley said in a news release after learning of the boy’s rescue.
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Gun control debate
Neighbours described Dykes as a 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 firearm.
The crisis in Alabama unfolded amid a divisive nationwide debate over gun control and the safety of schoolchildren after the December shooting that killed 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school.
President Barack Obama travelled to Minnesota on Monday to rally from the public and law enforcement community for his calls to ban assault weapons and install universal background checks for gun buyers. Gun advocates remain firmly opposed to tighter laws, arguing that gun ownership is a basic right enshrined in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.