A school bus driver was shot and a boy was being held hostage by the shooter in a bomb shelter in Alabama on Wednesday .
Federal and local police were trying to negotiate with the kidnapper who was holding the boy in a homemade bunker in his Midland City home, the New York Daily News reports.. The officials were communicating with the man through a PVC pipe connected to the bunker and they were told that the boy was not harmed. The boy needs medication but police were able to get it to him overnight.
SWAT teams were brought to the area, ready to take action.
The kidnapper boarded a Dale County school bus on Tuesday afternoon as it was dropping off children at a church. He demanded the students to get off the bus and he grabbed the boy, thought to be five or six years old and he shot and killed the bus driver in his mid-60's.
Witnesses said the incident began at around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday when the armed man boarded the Dale County school bus as it dropped off some children near a church.
The suspect's neighbor, Mike Creel spoke to some of the children involved in the incident,
"I talked to a girl that was riding the bus, and she told me that he came on the bus and said, 'I need two kids between the ages of 6 and 8," Creel said, according to the Daily News.
The bus driver tried to prevent the man from abducting the children, but the suspect shot him. The boy that the gunman grabbed had fainted, making him easy to kidnap.
The suspect has not yet been identified by police, but local paper Dothan Eagle said he was 67-year-old Vietnam veteran Jimmy Lee Dykes.
Creel told the Eagle that Dykes started building his bomb shelter right after moving in two years ago. He called him "not right in the head" and said "he's the type that thinks the government's out to get him."
Many of the escaped children his behind Destiny Church. They were physically unharmed but seemed to be in shock, minister Michael Senn said.
"I spoke to a young guy, 13-years-old, that was really traumatized," Senn told WSFA. The boy was friends with the boy who was kidnapped.
Schools were closed on Wednesday and several homes in the area were evacuated.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
