Shooting, then a Kidnapping of Young Boy in Alabama

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/us...nues.html?_r=0


MIDLAND CITY, Ala. — Many things hold little Southern towns together. There is a common love of the region, the peace that comes with a rural life and, often, prayer.

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The New York Times
The area in southern Alabama is known for its peanut farming.
In this town of 2,300 in the heart of peanut country, people drew on all of those as they endured what by Thursday night had stretched into an unimaginable situation.

A relative newcomer to town — a man who had fought in Vietnam and appeared to harbor a deep distrust of government and a grudge against every neighbor — shot and killed a bus driver on Tuesday, grabbed a 5-year-old boy named Ethan and then disappeared with the boy into a well-equipped bunker he had spent several months digging in his yard.

By all accounts, the man that neighbors and a sheriff’s office official identified as Jimmy Lee ****s, 65, had no connection to the boy.

“As far as we know, there is no relation at all,” said Michael Senn, a pastor at the Midway Assembly of God Church, who comforted some of the children who escaped from the bus and ran to his church. “He just wanted a child for a hostage situation.” Like so many clerics in this Bible-reading community, Mr. Senn has been leading prayer services as the hours have stretched into days.

By late Thursday, no end was in sight. The F.B.I. stayed in contact with Mr. ****s by day and let him sleep at night, said Police Chief James Arrington of Pinckard, a nearby city.

“They’re taking time and trying to wear him out,” he said. “He may do harm if they try to rush him. We don’t know how much ammunition or bombs he has.”

Mr. ****s, neighbors said, has been known to stay in his bunker for up to eight days. Some said they watched him build it, carrying cinder blocks and digging for hours.

No one is sure exactly why he took the boy. “He don’t care too much for the government,” Chief Arrington said. “That’s all we know.”

The boy, whom his mother calls “love bug,” is reportedly doing well in the bunker, an Alabama state senator, Harri Anne Smith, said in a television interview early Thursday. She and State Representative Steve Clouse have met with Ethan’s mother, and said food and medication her son needed for autism was delivered to the bunker through a 60-foot plastic pipe that was about four inches in diameter.

Still, Mr. Clouse said, the family is “just holding on by a thread.”

As it became clear that the standoff would continue — the bunker was well supplied with food and, apparently, a television and lights — the national news media began arriving.

Through Wednesday and into Thursday, residents watched as their tiny town, where the National Peanut Festival in nearby Dothan is usually the biggest event of the year, became a near-constant presence on national television.

The killing of the bus driver and the resulting standoff soon became one more point of discussion in the national debate about guns. Many people here own guns and hunt and are steadfast in their belief that guns are not the problem, mental health is.

Around town and along the entrance to the dirt road where the bunker was sunk into Mr. ****s’s land, people began arguing in favor of allowing bus drivers to carry guns.

“I follow the old Boy Scouts motto, ‘Be prepared,’ ” said James Alexander, 72, who said he sleeps with a gun by his pillow. “I cannot foresee a way to prevent this without shooting the guy.”

Although reporters were held across the highway from a red dirt road that leads into a wooded area with about a dozen houses, and there were no major developments to report on Thursday, on television the story was regularly spliced between coverage of state and national hearings on gun violence and mental health prompted by the shootings in Newtown, Conn., in December.

The reporter took his time and wrote this well. Veteran anti govt gun owners sound like crazy people before you even know what the story is about.

I do have a couple questions though, like how a 65 year old man built a fortified bunker on his own so quickly as a relatively new comer to town.

Did the author mean to suggest the only way to solve this problem is for good guys with guns to shoot this guy?

Was the author trying to say bible-reading peanut salt of the earth people that fear the government and own guns in general should be shot?

Is this supposed to be news or opinion? Oh, NYT...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mootness

The reporter took his time and wrote this well. Veteran anti govt gun owners sound like crazy people before you even know what the story is about.

I do have a couple questions though, like how a 65 year old man built a fortified bunker on his own so quickly as a relatively new comer to town.

Did the author mean to suggest the only way to solve this problem is for good guys with guns to shoot this guy?

Was the author trying to say bible-reading peanut salt of the earth people that fear the government and own guns in general should be shot?

Is this supposed to be news or opinion? Oh, NYT...

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Oh I agree. I wasn't posting this as an agreement or anything like that. I just posted it as I saw it as their continued efforts to not only attack gun owners, but also conservatives. "Another one of those damn anti-government bible hugging tea parties extremists again."