Alabama hostage standoff ends, boy safe

FBI officers have ended the seven-day-long hostage standoff in Midland City, Alabama after storming an underground bunker to save a five-year-old child in an operation that left the kidnapper dead.

FBI Special Agent Stephen E. Richardson said agents laid a siege to the single-entrance bunker and rescued the unharmed boy, called Ethan, at 3:12 p.m. local time (2012 GMT) on Monday.

“Within the past 24 hours, negotiations deteriorated and Mr. Dykes was observed holding a gun,” Richardson said. “At this point, FBI agents, fearing the child was in imminent danger, entered the bunker and rescued the child.”

Local TV reporters say the Federal Bureau of Investigation had spied on Dykes “the whole time,” using a wired camera secretly lowered into the bunker and saw he had a gun, but officials are yet to release details on how the kidnapper died in the operation.

Witnesses near the scene heard two loud booms like explosions at the time of the rescue operation that a local law enforcement source said was the detonation of a stun or flash grenade that FBI agents used in their surprise attack.

“I heard a big boom and then…I believe I heard rifle shots,” said a resident living near the bunker.

An anonymous FBI source said they created two diversions to distract Dykes before entering the bunker that Dykes, who fought for five years in the Vietnam War, had built in his residence.

The hostage situation started last Tuesday afternoon after Dykes stopped a school bus in Midland City, south Alabama, shot dead the driver, aged 66 years old, and took Ethan to the bunker.

Authorities had communicated with the 65-year-old hostage-taker through a connecting 60-foot-long (18.3-meter-long) plastic pipe and used it to give medication as well as other comfort items to Ethan, whose mother says has a mild form of autism.

Dykes’ motives for the school bus raid and hostage taking remain unknown.

The shooting incident comes as another violent episode in the US, which every month since 2009 reportedly has had a mass shooting taking place. On December 14, 20 children and six school staff were gunned down in the state of Connecticut.