Alabama standoff: Negotiators talking to captor through pipe More than three days after he allegedly shot a school bus driver dead, grabbed a kindergartner and slipped into an underground bunker, Jimmy Lee Dykes was showing no signs of turning himself over to police. Speaking into a 4-inch-wide ventilation pipe leading to the bunker, hostage negotiators tried again Thursday to talk the 65-year-old retired truck driver into freeing the 5-year-old boy. One local official said the child had been crying for his parents. Dykes is accused of pulling the boy from a school bus Tuesday and killing the driver, who tried to protect the 21 youngsters aboard. The gunman and the boy were holed up in a small room on his property that authorities likened to a tornado shelter, something common to this area of the South. He said authorities were communicating with the suspect, and their primary goal was to get the boy home safely. "There's no reason to believe the child has been harmed," he added. There were signs that the standoff could continue for some time. A state legislator said the shelter has electricity, food and TV. Midland City Mayor Virgil Skipper said he has been briefed by law enforcement agents and has visited with the boy's parents. Police have been delivering medication to him through the pipe, he added. The normally quiet red clay road leading to the bunker was teeming Friday with more than a dozen police cars and trucks, a fire truck, a helicopter, officers from multiple agencies and news media near Midland City, population 2,300. Police vehicles have come and gone steadily for hours from the command post. The latest group, a team in military-style uniforms toting weapons, got out of a big van in the pre-dawn chill Friday and moved into a staging area as a light flickered on and off. One of them appeared to be a dog handler. During the night, temperatures dipped into the low 40s, and police and other emergency workers wore heavy coats outside a small church being used as a command post. Overhead, a small aircraft with blinking lights flew wide circles high above the man's property Friday. An ambulance remained parked alongside the dirt road. Dykes was known around the neighborhood as a menacing figure who neighbors said once beat 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. The chief confirmed that Dykes held anti-government views, as described by multiple neighbors: "He's against the government -- starting with Obama on down." "He doesn't like law enforcement or the government telling him what to do," he said. When the driver tried to block his way, the gunman shot him several times and took the 5-year-old boy off the bus. The bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was hailed by locals as a hero who gave his life to protect the pupils on his bus. No motive has been discussed by investigators, but the police chief said the FBI had evidence suggesting it could be considered a hate crime. Federal authorities have not released any details about the standoff or the investigation. The mayor said he hasn't seen anything tying together Dykes' anti-government views and the allegations against him. Dykes had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump. Neighbor Claudia Davis said he yelled and fired shots at her, her son and her baby grandson over damage Dykes claimed their pickup truck did to a makeshift speed bump in the dirt road. The son, James Davis Jr., believes Tuesday's shooting was connected to the court date. I believe he thought I was going to be in court and he was going to get more charges than the menacing, which he deserved, and he had a bunch of stuff to hide and that's why he did it. Neighbors described a number of other run-ins with Dykes in the time since he moved to this small rural town near the Georgia and Florida borders, a region known for peanut farming. A neighbor directly across the street, Brock Parrish, said Dykes usually wore overalls and glasses and his posture was hunched-over. He said Dykes usually drove a run-down "creeper" van with some of the windows covered in aluminum foil. Parrish often saw him digging in his yard, as if he was preparing a spot to lay down a driveway or a building foundation. He lived in a small camping trailer on the site. He patrolled his lawn at night, walking from corner to corner with a flashlight and an assault rifle.