The 5 year old boy who has been held hostage for 5 days by an Alabama man in an underground bunker has ADHD and Aspergers, his mom says. Law enforcement agents have been able to deliver medication, toys, and coloring books to the child through a ventilation pipe, with the consent of his abductor. (HT: @texasinafrica)

  • http://twitter.com/MaryKateClark Zombie Marykate

    My heart goes out to that child and his family.  =-( 

  • Velocirapt42

    I keep imagining how his family must feel- I would have gone completely insane in the first 4 hours. 

    The bus driver, though, who refused the gunman’s demands and blocked the escaping kids with his body, is a total hero. Rest in peace, Charles Albert Poland. 

  • ingracewetrust

    There are no words. That poor child. His abductor had better suffer for this for the rest of his life.

    • SomeGuyNamedMark

      I’m trying to figure out if the guy in the bunker is the kid’s dad or not.  I haven’t seen an article say it clearly.

      • danimagoo

        He has absolutely no connection to the child at all. He went on the bus specifically to get children to take hostage.

        • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

          Guys like that made my mom paranoid.

          • SomeGuyNamedMark

            This maniac was giving off warnings long before this.  He regularly terrorized the neighborhood, had the police called on him, ranted about the government (of course) and was into guns on top of it.

  • vickytnz

    This is a terrible story, but for the sake of being pedantic … I thought that Asberger’s doesn’t exist anymore? Surely it’s called ‘mild autism’ now.

    • Velocirapt42

      DSM 5 hasn’t come out yet, so Asperger’s still exists for now.

  • James Penrose

    One hopes they will soon be able to deliver a .357 to the kidnapper/murderer through that pipe or otherwise.

    I truly hope they can rescue the kid and then kill this guy one way or another.  And no, I don’t give a damn if he is “sick”, was abused as a child or has some other excuse.

    You shoot a rabid dog, it cannot help itself but that does not mean you let it near your family.

    • SomeGuyNamedMark

      Unfortunately the guy is using the innocent kid as shield so they can’t just pump in the acetylene gas and toss in a match.

      • SomeDude

        I cannot figure out why they haven’t just pumped the place full of odorless sleeping gas.

        • http://profile.yahoo.com/65CSAR3QATRNKJW4NYNB2BESZE JohnQPublic

           you can’t – it’s been done and to awful consequences: the Russians pumped some anesthetic gas into a theater full of hostages held by Chechnyan rebels and ended up killing a quarter (half?) the hostages.  Anesthesia is a precise science and whatever knocks the man out would kill a child.  Also, the man might murder the child  before anything else can be done.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Particularly since the man will require four-plus times the amount of anesthetic agent as the child.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Holmen/562023961 Robert Holmén

            How about… they sneak an antidote to the sleeping gas into the kid’s pills next time they send those in.  It would work perfectly in a movie.

          • feetleet

            What about audio?

            As with most hostage care packages, the med supplies probably contained some kind of bug. Or alternatively, something like a parabolic mic could give some in-bunker audio. So LE can probably already RECEIVE  communication from the bunker (e.g., “cough for yes”). 

            And LE could exploit Dykes’ incidental presbycusis to SEND high-frequency kids-only messages to the kid. Like this thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito

            Between the two, you could at least COORDINATE a surprise escape/extraction with the kid (Dykes eventually has to sleep, for example). 

            But ANY proactive step is still a gamble – and whether that bet is worth taking is a decision I’m thankful I don’t have to make.

        • PhasmaFelis

          Pumping in a harmless gas that puts people to sleep with no chance of killing them would be an ideal solution. So would hitting the area with a broad-fan stun phaser fired from an orbiting starship. Unfortunately, neither one of those things exists.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/DBC5C7JCKZ2X4OUAM2TV6TFC3E Anna

    I have a 10 year old little brother with severe Autism, and have seen people treat him like sh*t before and so, as a big sister 7 yrs older than him, I am very very protective of him, in general I am very protective of any child, especially one with special needs, and this is just tearing my heart to pieces. I want to trade my life for his so bad. A person with special needs is one of the most innocent and selfless souls you will ever meet, at least, growing up with a special needs child and having my way of thinking changed and seeing things differently has made me think that, and I just want to trade my life for his so so bad so he can be back with his mother.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Holmen/562023961 Robert Holmén

      Have you called the authorities to offer to make that trade?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Holmen/562023961 Robert Holmén

    I think interesting research, somehow, would be… what makes these people finally snap?

    Apparently the guy has been a problem for a while but this hostage taking is magnitudes bigger than anything he’s done before.  What is it that turns the neighborhood crank into a maniac?

  • http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

    I hope that survivalist likes hearing about Star Trek…

  • dioptase

    Locking yourself in a small room with a 5 year old for days?  That was not a well thought out plan!

  • http://arib.livejournal.com Ari B.

    I can’t think of a way that this will end without the kidnapper getting shot in the face. That really doesn’t bother me at all, assuming the kid remains unharmed.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Holmen/562023961 Robert Holmén

    The most revelatory exposure to “Aspergers Syndrome” I’ve had was to watch the based-on-real-life movie about Harvey Pekar, “American Splendor” in which a major character has Aspergers and is portrayed by an actor as an unresponsive uncommunicative stump.

    Then I listened to the commentary track which was led by… the real-life guy that character was based on! He was chatty and witty and had no trouble interacting with the other people on the commentary panel.

    • cub

       are you talking about judah vs. toby?  well it’s telling that toby used to be a sort of on-air personality for mtv back in the day.

  • http://arib.livejournal.com Ari B.

    According to Auntie Beeb, it looks like I was right. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21331760

  • http://www.fieldsovgravity.com/ Garymon

      In the last half hour the FBI stormed the bunker. The kid is safe and the kidnaper is dead.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/us/boy-is-safe-after-alabama-hostage-standoff.html