A gunman holding a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker in
rural Alabama was killed on Monday and the child was plucked to safety
without injury, a local law enforcement official said.
"It's
all over," said the official, who asked not to be identified by name
because he had not been authorized to discuss the operation that led to
the successful rescue of the child.
"The boy is OK," he said.
The
rescue of boy came on the seventh day of a standoff in a rural corner
of southeast Alabama involving a suspect identified as 65-year-old Jimmy
Lee Dykes, a retired trucker and Vietnam veteran.
Dykes
seized the boy last Tuesday after boarding a school bus near his home
and killing its driver with four shots from a 9 mm handgun, local
sheriff's department officials said.
The law
enforcement source said a stun or flash grenade was detonated as part of
the operation to free the boy, but further details were not immediately
available.
The drama in Midland City, Alabama, came
amid heightened concerns about gun violence and school safety across the
United States after the December shooting deaths of 20 children and six
adults at a Connecticut elementary school. — Reuters
source: gmanetwork.com
