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Police sending food, medicine to child hostage

Published: February 4, 2013 Comment on this article

MIDLAND CITY, Ala. (AP) — Authorities say they continue to send food, medication and other items into a bunker where a man is holed up with a 5-year-old hostage.

photo - Members of the community gather to pray for a 5-year-old taken hostage, in Midland City, Ala., Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013. Authorities say Jim Lee Dykes, 65 — a decorated Vietnam-era veteran known as Jimmy to neighbors — gunned down a school bus driver and then abducted a 5-year-old boy from the bus, taking him to an underground bunker on his rural property. The driver, 66-year-old Charles Albert Poland Jr., who was shot trying to protect children on his bus, was buried Sunday. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)

Members of the community gather to pray for a 5-year-old taken hostage, in Midland City, Ala., Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013. Authorities say Jim Lee Dykes, 65 — a decorated Vietnam-era veteran known as Jimmy to neighbors — gunned down a school bus driver and then abducted a 5-year-old boy from the bus, taking him to an underground bunker on his rural property. The driver, 66-year-old Charles Albert Poland Jr., who was shot trying to protect children on his bus, was buried Sunday. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)

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Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said Monday that officers have been speaking with 65-year-old Jim Dykes around the clock.

Olson says authorities are doing everything possible to resolve the situation. He would not say if authorities have spoken with the child or if they can hear the boy, but Olson says it is believed the boy is doing OK.

Dykes is accused of killing a school bus driver, 66-year-old Charles Albert Poland Jr., before escaping with the kindergartener.

A state lawmaker who has spent time with the child's mother has said the boy has Asperger's syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.