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The Week-long Midland City Hostage Situation Has Ended

Dothan Eagle

The week-long hostage ordeal of a 5-year-old Alabama boy is over. Officials say the man who killed a bus driver and took the boy from a school bus last Tuesday is dead.  The drama played out in an underground bunker where retired truck driver Jim Dykes had held the boy.

Authorities say a decision was made to storm the bunker because the child was in imminent danger.

Steve Richardson with the FBI's office in Mobile said at a news conference Monday afternoon that negotiations deteriorated and that 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes had been seen with a gun.

At that, officers believed the child was in imminent danger. Officers entered the bunker just after 3 p.m. CST.

It was not immediately clear how Dykes died.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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