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Another whacky RW gun nut/Fox/Rush/Beck etc etc brainwashee/paranoid bites the dust. Get some fresh air dupes, you're played to the cliff....
The hostage situation ended Monday when FBI agents entered the bunker and freed the boy. The 65-year-old hostage-taker is dead, law enforcement officials on the scene said. The military detection equipment was delivered on site, according to a military official, but it could not immediately be determined if the equipment was used before or during the rescue.
Three Defense Department officials tell CNN that the equipment requested was similar to the technology used in war zones to detect buried explosives. Some small number of troops would have been needed to operate the equipment on-site. Panetta personally approved it said one senior Defense official, emphasizing the military was prepared to offer whatever it could to assist in rescuing the child. That official emphasized the involvement of the military was strictly limited to offering technical assistance and gear not readily available to civilian law enforcement.
U.S. military personnel would have played no role in the assault, the official said, as U.S. troops are not permitted to undertake civilian law enforcement action.
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After days of fruitless negotiations, talks had deteriorated with an increasingly agitated Jimmy Lee Dykes, who had kidnapped the child from a school bus after fatally shooting the driver. Dykes had been seen with a gun, and officers concluded the boy was in imminent danger, said Steve Richardson of the FBI's office in Mobile. Officials refused to say how the 65-year-old died. "Ever since this started, there's never been a moment that (the boy) wasn't on my mind," said Michael Senn, pastor of a church near where reporters had been camped out since the standoff began. "So when I heard that he was OK, it was just like a thousand pounds lifted off of me." The rescue capped a long drama that drew national attention to this town of 2,400 people nestled amid peanut farms and cotton fields that has long relied on a strong Christian faith, a policy of "love thy neighbor" and the power of group prayer. The child's plight prompted nightly candlelight vigils.
Throughout the ordeal, authorities had been speaking with Dykes though a plastic pipe that went into the shelter. They also sent food, medicine and other items into the bunker, which apparently had running water, heat and cable television but no toilet. It was about 4 feet underground, with about 50 square feet of floor space. Authorities said the kindergartner appeared unharmed. He was taken to a hospital in nearby Dothan. Officials have said he has Asperger's syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. FBI bomb technicians were clearing the property for explosive devices and planned to look more closely at the scene when it's safe, FBI spokesman Jason Pack said. Daryle Hendry, who lives about a quarter-mile from the bunker, said he heard a boom Monday afternoon, followed by what sounded like a gunshot.
Melissa Knighton, city clerk in Midland City, said a woman had been praying in the town center Monday afternoon. Not long after, the mayor called with news that Dykes was dead and that the boy was safe. "She must have had a direct line to God because shortly after she left, they heard the news," Knighton said. Neighbors described Dykes as a menacing, unpredictable 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. Government records and interviews with neighbors indicate that Dykes joined the Navy in Midland City and served on active duty from 1964 to 1969. His record shows several awards, including the Vietnam Service Medal and the Good Conduct Medal. During his service, Dykes was trained in aviation maintenance. He had some scrapes with the law in Florida, including a 1995 arrest for improper exhibition of a weapon. The misdemeanor was dismissed. He also was arrested for marijuana possession in 2000.
He returned to Alabama about two years ago, moving onto the rural tract about 100 yards from his nearest neighbors. Ronda Wilbur, a neighbor of Dykes who said the man beat her dog to death last year with a pipe, said she was relieved to be done with the stress of knowing Dykes was patrolling his yard and willing to shoot at anyone or anything that trespassed. "The nightmare is over. It's been a long couple of years of having constant stress," she said. On Sunday, more than 500 people attended a memorial service for bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., who was hailed as a hero for protecting the two dozen other children on the bus before he was gunned down and the little boy grabbed. "This man was a true hero who was willing to give up his life so others might live," Gov. Robert Bentley said in a news release after learning of the boy's rescue.
Police: Announcement coming on Ala. hostage
As the standoff dragged on, an FBI hostage rescue team practiced on a nearby mockup of the bunker until kidnapper Jimmy Lee Dykes' declining mental state forced them to move in Monday afternoon, law enforcement sources said Tuesday. The resulting assault - from the top of the bunker, according to a law enforcement source - ended with Dykes dead and the boy, named Ethan, free. Authorities took him to the hospital for evaluation, where he remained Tuesday. "He was running around the hospital room, putting sticky notes on everyone who was in there, eating a turkey sandwich and watching 'Spongebob'," Dale County Schools Superintendent Ronny Bynum said. It was not immediately clear when Ethan might be released, according to school officials. Authorities say Dykes abducted the young boy from a school bus January 29.
Dykes approached the bus and demanded that the driver hand over two children. Dykes killed driver Charles Poland as he blocked the aisle - allowing children to escape from the back of the bus, then seized Ethan and fled to the bunker, according to authorities. During the ensuing standoff, authorities were extraordinarily tight-lipped about what was happening, but said they were in contact with Dykes and said they believed he had not harmed the boy. He also allowed authorities to deliver food, medicine and at least one toy for the boy to play with, according to authorities. The details about the law enforcement response to his abduction are the first provided by authorities about how they knew what was going on inside the bunker and why they decided to move when they did.
But many questions remain, including whether the Defense Department provided sensing equipment to aid in monitoring what was happening inside the bunker and why Dykes acted as he did. At one point Monday, Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson told reporters that Dykes had "a story that's important to him, although it's very complex." But according to a law enforcement source, Dykes' mental state deteriorated in the 24 hours before the Monday afternoon rescue. Experts from FBI units, including a crisis negotiation team, tactical intelligence officers and a behavioral sciences unit, had determined Dykes was in a downward psychological spiral, the source said. At 3:12 p.m. (4:12 ET) on Monday, the FBI team went in.
One neighbor said he was outside when he was startled by the sound of an explosion. "I heard a big boom and then ... I believe I heard rifle shots," said Bryon Martin, who owns a home near the bunker where Ethan had been held. It was a loud noise that "made me jump off the ground," he said. Authorities wouldn't say whether the blast was set off as a diversionary tactic or whether Dykes had planted explosives around the bunker. While the law enforcement source said FBI agents went in through the top of the bunker, the source declined to say specifically how they breached the roof, how many agents were involved or whether Dykes shot himself or was killed by FBI gunfire. A Dale County official told CNN that Dykes had been shot multiple times. The body remains "in the area" and will be examined by the county coroner before it is taken to Montgomery, Alabama, for autopsy by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, the official said. Olson declined to say whether the boy saw his abductor die. "He's a very special child. He's been through a lot, he's endured a lot," he said.
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The boy, known publicly only as Ethan, has returned home. He appeared to be doing well Tuesday at a Dothan, Ala., hospital, according to his grandmother, after he was removed safely from a makeshift underground bunker by law enforcement after a six-day hostage standoff that left his captor shot dead by the FBI. "For the first time in almost a week, I woke up this morning to the most beautiful sight ... my sweet boy," Ethan's mother said in a statement released by the FBI. "I can't describe how incredible it is to hold him again."
The boy's grandmother, Betty Jean Ransbottom, told the Associated Press that Ethan seemed fine physically, but she was uncertain about how he might fair mentally after being kept hostage for nearly a week. His aunt, Debra Cook, said Ethan seemed to have come through the ordeal physically unscathed. She said he was playing with toy dinosaurs and seemed happy, watching SpongeBob SquarePants cartoons in the hospital. "He has gone through a terrible ordeal, and I don't know if he will ever get over it," Cook told the AP. "I just want him to be all right."
The principal at Midland City Elementary, which Ethan attends, told CNN that more than 1,200 birthday cards had been received from supporters across the nation. The town hopes to hold a massive birthday party in a football stadium to show their thanks that he survived the horrific ordeal.
Meanwhile, locals mourned the boy's bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, who was shot and killed in the abduction last week. He was hailed as a hero for protecting other children on the bus, shielding them from the gunman. The abductor, Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, a Vietnam veteran who had a long history of violence, was killed in the raid.
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