Nightmare of Despicable Proportions

Again, out of the United States - although admittedly it could happen anywhere, considering the large numbers of incidents taking place in China with berserk men entering primary schools and stabbing young children - another hideous incident of a psychopath victimizing a child of five, after having shot a school bus driver to death in his determination to halt the advance of a madman and protect the children on his bus.

A man held to be a loner, a man who posed a threat to his rural neighbours, and who held himself aloof from others, a former member of the U.S. military, as a VietNam veteran, has run amok in his rural Alabama neighbourhood southeast of the state capital. The man, named as 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes, forced his way on to a school bus delivering rural children back home after their school day. The 66-year-old bus driver's attempt to stop him, ended in his death.

And there was no one left, other than the children themselves - one of whom was a teen living nearby who had the presence of mind to shepherd the younger children to the back of the bus during the altercation between the bus driver and the psychopath, to protect themselves. They were themselves foiled when the man plucked a five-year-old developmentally delayed boy off the bus and abducted him. The autistic child has now been with the man in an underground bunker for four days.

"As far as we know there is no relation at all. He just wanted a child for a hostage situation", explained a church pastor who was aiding in the comfort of the children traumatized by this turn of events in their otherwise normal lives. The bunker is said to be equipped with electricity, and has ample food stored within it to withstand a brief siege. 

Local police have released a photograph of the man. A SWAT team is on the scene, surrounding the property in Midland City.

Jimmy Lee Dykes (Photo: Alabama Department of Public Safety)

Police are surrounding a home in Alabama - where a gunman is holding a five-year-old boy hostage.

Mr. Dykes is feared in the neighbourhood. He was to have appeared in court before the abduction, on charges of threatening his neighbours. As they drove by his house weeks ago, Claudia Davis and her family were menaced by the man. He called out and fired shots at her, her son and her baby grandson over damage he claims their pickup truck had done to a makeshift speed bump he had built into the dirt road.

On previous occasions he has threatened his neighbours, and once beat a neighbour's dog with a lead pipe for appearing on his side of the dirt road separating him from his neighbours, inflicting deadly wounds on the animal. "He's very paranoid. He goes around in his yard at night with a flashlight and shotgun. Everybody up the hill tried to avoid him", said one neighbour whose wife described how he had threatened to shoot their children if they ventured onto his property again.

This scenario plays right into the debate in the United States on the need for new gun laws, and the requirement to altogether outlaw some weapons, and certainly to keep them out of the hands of deranged individuals. A tall order in a country that prides itself on personal independence and the guarantee as they see it, of peoples' 'right' to bear arms.