Two Alabama state legislators who have been in touch with the family of the 5-year-old boy held hostage in a bunker discuss the case.
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
An Alabama boy was beginning his fourth day of captivity in an underground bunker Friday with a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran who allegedly shot dead a school bus driver, but the five-year-old has received medicine he needs, plus crayons and coloring books.
Hostage negotiators have been talking to the boy's captor through a lengthy PVC pipe, but there was no sign of progress. Police told Alabama media Thursday that the man has been known to stay in the bunker as long as eight days.
The boy, a 5-year-old named Ethan known to his mother as "Love Bug," was apparently unharmed, a state senator said Thursday.
His family, which has not spoken publicly since the abduction, was "holding on by a thread," a state representative told NBC's TODAY. "We are all just hoping this can come to a safe end," Rep. Steve Clouse said.
Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, a Vietnam veteran described by authorities as a loner with anti-government suspicions and by neighbors as a paranoid menace, is suspected of taking the boy after storming his school bus Tuesday afternoon. School bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was slain.
Kelly Miller, Dykes? next-door neighbor, told NBC station WSMV that on Monday Dykes got on Poland?s bus and spoke with him. She did not know what was said.
On Tuesday morning, Miller said that Poland had given Dykes a gift of eggs and marmalade to thank him for clearing off the driveway where the bus had to turn around.
However, Miller -- whose sons Jessie and Jackson were allowed to leave the bus before the shooting ? told the station Dykes called her father to the property fence shortly afterward and gave him Poland?s gifts, saying: "Here. I don't want this."
Hours later, Miller heard shots and screams. "Within seconds of me grasping what was going on, I knew it was Jim," she told WSMV.
A source close to the investigation said the bunker, which is on Dykes' property and was described by a neighbor as 4 feet long, 6 feet wide and 8 feet deep, was equipped with power, food, television and plenty of supplies. The source said negotiators had gotten medicine, crayons and coloring books to the boy.
Late Thursday, Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said the negotiations through the pipe were continuing, WSMV reported.
Clouse told reporters that the boy suffered from Asperger's syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but had been able to get his medicine while held captive.
People in the small Alabama town of Midland City, not far from the Florida line, expressed hope that prayer might help. For the negotiators, a former chief hostage negotiator for the FBI said, it was a matter of waiting.
"He doesn't want to hurt the child. He didn't take the child to hurt him," said the former negotiator, Clint Van Zandt, an analyst for MSNBC. "The child is simply the means to keep law enforcement from crashing into his bunker right now."
He added: "Time is on the side of the negotiator."
One report suggested it could still be a long wait.
James Arrington, police chief of the nearby town of Pinckard, told The Birmingham News that Dykes has been known to stay in his bunker as long as eight days.
The source told NBC News that the man believed to be Dykes walked onto the bus on Tuesday with a note, demanding that two children be handed over to him. The bus driver refused and was shot and killed.
Clouse said the kidnapping appeared to be random.
Neighbors in Midland City have said they saw Dykes tirelessly digging and working on the bunker. One man said it was protected by several feet of sand on top.
Poland has been hailed as a hero. The county school system said 21 children made it off the bus alive.
"My brother would have done anything to protect those kids," Poland's sister, Vicki Upchurch, told NBC station KHQ of Spokane, Wash.
Poland and his family grew up in northern Idaho, where much of the family still lives, Upchurch said.?
Relatives were planning to travel from Idaho to Alabama for Poland's funeral services this weekend.?
"We will get through this," Upchurch said. "My brother was very religious. He had a deep faith."
M. Alex Johnson, Ian Johnston, Matthew DeLuca, Gabe Gutierrez, Isolde Raftery and Alastair Jamieson of NBC News contributed to this report.
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