5 year old boy held hostage in bunker

[Duchess]

The survivalist who allegedly shot a school bus driver before taking a five-year-old boy hostage has said that he will release his hostage if a reporter is sent in to tell his story.

MailOnline has learned that Jimmy Lee Dykes made the extraordinary offer on the first day of what has now turned into a siege situation with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team on site, emergency services and a host of media focused on the piece of Alabama bluff under which Dykes and the boy, Ethan, are holed up.

A source with the local sheriff's office has revealed that a CID Lieutenant spoke with Dykes for the first four hours of the hostage situation, communicating via a pipe sticking out from the ground – the only surface sign of the bunker’s location.

In those first crucial hours, Vietnam veteran Dykes attempted to strike his bargain – the boy in return for a reporter to tell his story of ‘how the government had screwed him.’

According to the source, the bunker lies beneath what appears to be landscaped garden.

There is a coi carp pond and a winding path before the ground rises to conceal two old freight containers buried beneath.

The door is believed to be booby trapped.

He said: ‘You would think it was just landscaped yard. It’s not that unusual to have bunkers here – he told his neighbor he was making a tornado bunker.

‘A lot of folks around here have that. They can’t afford the pre-made plastic ones you sink into the ground so they buy old freight containers for $2000 and dig a hole.’

The FBI had considered sinking a wire into the pipe to give them ‘eyes and ears’ in the bunker where Dykes has access to TV and a monitor linked to a camera via which he can monitor activity in his yard.

He said : ‘They decided to X-Ray the site first and they found it was wired with explosives.



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This info is coming from the Daily Mail. LC used to tell me that while they had wonderful photographs they weren't always spot on with their reporting so please keep that in mind.