Infignos Media - Midland City: Day 6, Dykes allowing 'comfort items' for child

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Midland City: Day 6, Dykes allowing 'comfort items' for child

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Our mission is to resolve this situation peacefully for both the child and Mr. Dykes.

Throughout the day, Mr. Dykes has continued to allow us to deliver food, medicine and comfort items to the child. Some of those items we have delivered include a red Hot Wheels car and some Cheezits crackers.

We continue to maintain an open line of communication with Mr. Dykes. He continues to make the environment as comfortable as possible for the child.

The next scheduled press briefing will be at 11 A.M. on Monday, February 4th, 2013 at the usual location. A review of recent developments up to this point: A photo of the suspect was released and the school bus on which the driver was fatally shot and from which a 5-year-old child was abducted was moved on Friday.

Dykes told authorities that he has an electric heater and blankets inside the bunker to keep warm during the cold overnight hours. He has provided the child hostage with the coloring books, crayons, toys and the medicine authorities have sent down into the bunker.

Authorities say they thanked Dykes for taking care of the child and that they continue to have constant communication with him.

Local and national attention continues to focus on the child hostage standoff in the small, southeastern Alabama town of Midland City where authorities continue with efforts to bring the 5-year-old and his captor, the suspected killer of the boy's bus driver, out of an underground bunker.

Friday, police departments in Montgomery and Prattville offered to assist with any help authorities in Dale County may need. Officers with MPD are now being utilized for perimeter support. Prattville officers are on standby, according to Chief Mark Thompson said his department is ready to help in any way. "It's just real trying on them," Chief Thompson said of local law enforcement whom he says may know the child and his family and not be able to rescue him as fast as they would like.

News conferences to update the status of the situation have been few, brief, and thin on details. Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson held just two briefings Thursday, 15 hours apart, at which he could only reiterate that negotiations, taking place via a PVC pipe connected to the buried bunker, were ongoing, and the little boy is believed to be relatively unharmed. Friday, he thanked the media in a one minute news conference for being patient and promised to release information as fast as possible. He also warned that unless information came from him at the podium he uses, the information is rumor and he won't speculate on it. His department then emailed a photo of Dykes, and what little information about him they could. The suspect's photo was emailed out to gathered members of the media. A short time before the news conference, cameras captured footage of the crimes scene, Poland's school bus, being towed away to an undisclosed location with a police unit following close behind. Authorities are saying little else out of an abundance of caution in an effort not to damage their operation. But citizens of Midland City, where approximately 2,300 people call home, are growing anxious. The situation hasn't changed in nearly 80 hours.

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Keywords: child,press briefing ,school bus driver,Midland City,killer,underground bunker,

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