![]() Steve Clouse, who represents the Midland City area, said he visited the boy's mother Thursday and that she is "hanging on by a thread." They are praying and asking all of us to pray with them." Midland City Mayor Virgil Skipper said he has been briefed by law enforcement agents and has visited with the boy's parents. "It's pretty small, but he's been known to stay in there eight days." "He will have to give up sooner or later because (authorities) are not leaving," Arrington said. The shelter was about 4 feet underground, with about 6-by-8 feet of floor space and the PVC pipe that negotiators were speaking through, said James Arrington, police chief of the neighboring town of Pinckard. "I want to give him a reason to come out," Van Zandt said, "and my reason is, 'You didn't mean that to happen. The negotiator should try to ease Dykes' anxieties over what will happen when the standoff ends, and refer to both the boy and Dykes by their first names to humanize them. He cautioned against any drastic measures, such as cutting the electricity or putting sleep gas inside the bunker because it could agitate Dykes. Hostage negotiators have used the pipe to talk to the gunman, identified by neighbors as Jimmy Lee Dykes, but investigators have been tightlipped about their conversations.įormer FBI hostage negotiator Clint Van Zandt said authorities at the scene shouldn't rush to resolve the standoff as long as they are confident that the boy is unharmed. There were signs the standoff could go on for some time: the shelter has electricity, food, TV, and police have delivered the boy's medication through a 4-inch-wide ventilation pipe leading to the bunker. The gunman shot a school bus driver to death Tuesday, grabbed a 5-year-old boy off the bus and slipped into an underground bunker on his property in rural Alabama, police said. The standoff between police and a gunman accused of holding a kindergartner hostage in an underground bunker dragged into a fourth day on Friday, as authorities sought to continue delicate conversations with the man through a pipe and worked to safely end the tense situation.
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