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Alabama police kill kidnapper and save boy | |
(35 minutes later) | |
Police in the US state of Alabama have killed a hostage-taker after a six-day standoff, saving the five-year-old boy he abducted. | |
FBI agent Steve Richardson told a news conference police shot Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, 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. | |
An ambulance was seen driving away, without sirens or emergency lights. | |
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 this afternoon. | |
The incident began in Midland City on Tuesday afternoon when the bus driver refused to hand over the child, whom Mr Dykes apparently snatched at random. | |
According to witnesses, the kidnapper pounced when the school bus stopped to let off two children. | |
Mr Dykes grabbed the door so it could not close and came on board, demanding two boys aged six and eight. | |
When the bus driver, Charles Albert Poland, blocked the bus aisle with his arm, witnesses said Mr Dykes fired four shots, killing him. | |
During the six-day standoff, officials talked to Mr Dykes and delivered medication to the boy through a 4in (10cm) ventilation pipe. | |
According to court records, Mr Dykes had been due to appear in court last Wednesday for menacing neighbours as they drove past his home some weeks ago. | |
Other neighbours said he had once beaten 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. | |
Court records showed Mr Dykes was arrested in Florida in 1995 for improper exhibition of a weapon, but the charges were dismissed. |