FBI raid bunker and release little boy

[avoncallingu]

At 3:12 this afternoon the FBI somehow stormed the bunker and released the little 5 year old boy who had been held hostage underground for over a week. The man holding him hostage was killed in the process. More details as they become available - on TV.

[Darth Penguin]

The bus driver who was shot and killed was buried yesterday.

A grieving community is preparing to bury a driver murdered trying to protect children on his bus, as the police stand-off with an Alabama man accused of the killing and holding a five-year-old boy hostage continued.

Charles Poland, 66, known locally as Chuck, was described by people in his home town of Newton as a humble hero and hundreds attended services for him on Saturday night.

Mourners praised Mr Poland for laying down his life for the children on the bus on Tuesday afternoon. His funeral is due to be held. "I believe that if he had to do it all over again tomorrow, he would," Mr Poland's sister-in-law Lavern Skipper said. "He would do it for those children."

[Darth Penguin]

Alabama police kill kidnapper and save boy

Police in the US state of Alabama have killed a kidnapper, saving his five-year-old boy captive from the bunker where he had been held for six days.
FBI agent Steve Richardson told a news conference Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, was killed after negotiations deteriorated.
He had been keeping the boy, Ethan, in a storm shelter since last Tuesday after abducting him from a school bus and shooting dead the driver.
The 66-year-old bus driver's funeral was held on Sunday.
Daryle Hendry, who lives about a quarter of a mile from the bunker, told the Associated Press he heard a boom followed by a gunshot on Monday afternoon.
Mr Richardson said negotiations between officials and Dykes had deteriorated over the past 24 hours, and that the abductor had been seen holding a gun.
Fearing the child was in imminent danger, officials raided the bunker at 15:12 local time (21:12 GMT), he said.

[Natalka]

I was so very glad to hear this was over - so sad the boy had to endure that.

[VeeVee]

I don't understand why this took a week to free this little boy? Why didn't they storm the bunker days ago, why now what changed?
This is terrible, poor boy had to endure being held captive for this long, poor parents!

[Patty Smyth]

Reports said the FBI had a camera in the bunker and were waiting for the right time. If this guy was a survivalist he would have had guns, gas masks, all kids of stuff.

[Darth Penguin]

It's very difficult to use gas under those circumstances. You need to be able to judge the dose so that both people are affected at the same time otherwise the kidnapper would notice the child being affected first. And if the police/FBI had misjudged the doseage and killed the child....then that would be a lot of condemnations in the aftermath. The Moscow theatre siege shows how using gas can go very wrong...

[Darth Penguin]

The FBI and other law enforcement officials left plenty of questions open about how they made the call to rush in and what happened inside the closet-sized hideout on a rural Alabama property, where the boy had been held by Jimmy Lee Dykes. But relatives said there was no question about the relief they feel."If I could, I would do cartwheels all the way down the road," the boy's great-aunt, Debra Cook, told ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday. "We'd all been walking around in a fog."
She said the boy was happy and playing with his old toys, including a dinosaur. "He was having the biggest time," Cook said.
After FBI agents determined that talks with an increasingly agitated Dykes were breaking down, they stormed the shelter Monday afternoon and freed the kindergartner. The 65-year-old armed captor was killed by law enforcement agents, an official told The Associated Press.

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