Man Shoots School Bus Driver, Takes Child Hostage

A man in Midland City, Ala., is holding a 6-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker after shooting a school bus driver dead. The incident started yesterday afternoon when the man boarded the school bus near a church, CNN reports. "He told most of them to get off the bus," a local pastor says. "And then he grabbed a little boy and shot the bus driver four times." A resident who spoke to children that fled the bus says the man demanded two children, and then grabbed one that had fainted.

Neighbors have identified the man as 67-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes, the Dothan Eagle reports. They say Dykes spent at least a year creating a bunker behind his home and was sometimes seen digging late at night. "He’s the type that thinks the government’s out to get him," a neighbor says. "He’s not right in the head." SWAT team members have been communicating with Dykes through a pipe. (More Alabama stories.)