Alabama gunman kills bus driver, seizes boy
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:00 pm
The gunman, identified by neighbors as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired truck driver, was known as “the crazy man of the neighborhood, a paranoid and menacing figure who 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 shotgun.
He had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump.
The standoff dragged on through the night and into the afternoon Wednesday after the gunman boarded a stopped school bus in the small town of Midland City on Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. Sheriff Wally Olsen said the man shot the driver when he refused to hand over a 6-year-old child. The gunman then took the kindergartener away.
Alabama gunman kills bus driver, seizes boy - Salon.com
He had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump.
The standoff dragged on through the night and into the afternoon Wednesday after the gunman boarded a stopped school bus in the small town of Midland City on Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. Sheriff Wally Olsen said the man shot the driver when he refused to hand over a 6-year-old child. The gunman then took the kindergartener away.
Alabama gunman kills bus driver, seizes boy - Salon.com