2013 Alabama bunker hostage crisis
On January 29, 2013, a hostage crisis, lasting almost seven days, began in the Wiregrass Region near U.S. Highway 231 in Midland City, Alabama. Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old Vietnam War-era veteran, boarded a Dale County school bus, killed the driver, and took a five-year-old boy hostage. On the afternoon of February 4, law enforcement agents entered the bunker, killed Dykes, and rescued the child. Details Bus driver slaying Just after 3:30 p.m., Dykes boarded a Dale County school bus that was stopped in Midland City and told the driver that he wanted to take two children, six and eight years old, both boys, from the bus. The school bus driver, 66-year-old Charles Albert Poland, Jr., refused to let him take the children and challenged Dykes to shoot him. He blocked access to the aisle of the bus while Dykes continued to argue with him. Dykes fired five shots, killing Poland, and left the bus taking Ethan Gilman, a five-year-old autistic student from Midland City Elementary School, with him. After he had left the bus with Gilman, the students on the bus left through the front door, having to pass by the body of Poland, whom many of them had