Boy Hostage: Day Five

The damage this boy has been inflicted with will be immeasurable and will last a lifetime.  It is unthinkable.  

Alabama hostage crisis stretches into day 5: Suspect holding a young boy hostage has holed up in bunker for days on end in the past 

The gunman was described as a survivalist with "anti-American" views. The young boy he has allegedly kidnapped is unharmed but has cried to go home, police say.

Suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes has been holed up in a bunker on his property with the child for nearly a week.

-/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

This image released on February 1, 2013 by the Alabama Department of Public Safety shows Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired trucker and Vietnam War veteran. Dykes is suspected of kidnapping a five-year-old boy.

An Alabama man holding a terrified young boy hostage in an underground bunker might not be giving up any time soon, authorities said.

Police were negotiating through a 4-inch ventilation pipe with the man, believed to be Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65,a Vietnam veteran and retired truck driver with a wicked temper and a history of threatening neighbors.

Authorities were tight lipped about the conversation with Dykes but said the hostage situation, which entered its fifth day on Saturday, might stretch on for a while. Dykes is holding a 5-year-old boy identified as Ethan who was snatched off a bus at gunpoint.

"He will have to give up sooner or later because are not leaving," James Arrington, police chief of nearby Pinckard, told the Associated Press. Dykes has stayed in the bunker for up to 8 days in the past, Pinckard said.

Police say Dykes has stayed in the bunker for up to 8 days in the past.

Ethan is physically unharmed but has cried for his parents and wants to go home, police said. The bunker on Dykes’ property has water and electricity. The gunman has allowed authorities to pass down coloring books and medication to treat the child's Asperger's syndrome and attention deficit disorder, State Rep. Steve Clouse told the Los Angeles Times.

Neighbors and court records indicate that Dykes has a history of violent and erratic behavior.

He once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe for straying onto his property.

JULIE BENNETT/AP

Law enforcement officials continue to work the scene of the hostage crisis in Midland City, Ala., Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. Local, state and federal officers wait out a man accused of shooting and killing a school bus driver, then snatching a 5-year-old child. Suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes has been holed up in a bunker on his property with the child since the late afternoon shooting on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013.

A retired truck driver and Navy veteran, Dykes moved to Midland City five years ago and soon after began threatening residents. He was due in court this week on a charge of menacing a neighbor who says he fired shots at her, her son and her infant grandson.

Dykes was also described as a survivalist with "anti-American" views, the Times reported.

Dykes apparently grabbed the boy at random after a violent confrontation on a packed school bus Tuesday. Armed with a gun, Dykes stopped the bus and demanded two boys, ages 6 and 8, leave with him. The driver of the bus, Charles Albert Poland, Jr., was shot and killed when he tried to intervene.

Poland will be memorialized Saturday.

"He stood in that place, and when that man came to take two children, he said no. And he lost his life because of that ... he did his job, and I'm proud of him as the governor but I'm just proud of him as a human being," Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said.