2013 Alabama bunker hostage crisis

On January 29, 2013, a five-year-old boy was taken hostage for almost seven days in Dale County, Alabama, in the United States. The boy, Ethan, was riding to school on a bus. A 65-year-old Vietnam War veteran named Jimmy Lee Dykes came aboard the bus and killed the driver. Dykes took Ethan to an underground bunker on his property, in the Wiregrass Region near U.S. Highway 231.

The location of the crime

On the afternoon of Monday, February 4, after negotiations with Dykes had failed and believing the child was going to be hurt very soon, law enforcement agents raided the bunker. The abductor was shot dead. Ethan, who has Asperger's syndrome, was rescued.

Neighbors and officials had described Dykes as a survivalist with "anti-government" views.^[1]