How they Saved Ethan from Dykes

How they saved Ethan

We observed that Dykes was walking around with a gun while negotiations had not succeeded. At that point we decided to take action, says Stephen E. Richardson, head of the FBI in Mobile to reporters outside 65 year old's home in the small town of Midland City, Alabama.

Supervised

In recent days, police had been smuggled  advanced monitoring instruments into the bunker and could take close account of Dykes movements, says a special source who   gained insight into the action of the   newspaper The New York Times . 

Just off the 65 year old's home, the police had also built a replica of the bunker  of Dykes where they practiced different scenarios.

Meanwhile, they communicated with the 65-year-old Vietnam veteran through a ventilation duct. A pipe through which Ethan also got   medications as well as crayons and food.

 the grenades

But yesterday it was time to take action. According to the sources told the newspaper police Dykes perceived as very unstable and feared for the five year-olds life. 

They released   two explosive elements into the bunker. The powerful blast, which could be heard throughout the neighborhood, must have disturbed Dykes so that two or three FBI officials could go into the bunker and bring Ethan into freedom. 

How Dykes was shot and killed is unknown at this time. 

Police feared that while the bunker was full of traps,  bomb experts searched through the place after the action  not found any evidence of this. 

Once the five-year-old was freed  he was reunited with  his mother. 

- He laughs, jokes, plays games and eats - in other words behaves  as is common for a 5-6 year old, says special agent of the FBI, Stephen Richardson to the media.

Opened escape hatch in the bus

The dramatic kidnapping began Tuesday a week ago when Dykes stopped a school bus and demanded to pick up two children aged 6-8 years. 

But the resourceful bus driver Albert Poland opened an escape hatch in the back of the bus by which  he prevented Dykes from running after  20 of the children who managed to escape, while five-year-old Ethan was taken prisoner by the 65-year-old Vietnam veteran. 

Dykes shot and killed Poland in the battle for the school bus, and Sunday saw hundreds of people at his funeral to pay tribute to the man who probably saved the lives of many children when he intervened and prevented Dykes, a week ago.

- Violent loner

The offender moved to the farm where he built the bunker   a year ago and neighbors have told the American press about a man who constantly spouted with violent threats and mostly kept to himself. 

According to police, he wanted to get attention around the issues he stands for by kidnapping children.At the moment police do not want to go into detail about what kind of issues are involved, but police say they were  hate crimes, motivated by the fact that the man is against the government. 

The same day that the abduction occurred, the 65-year-old   met in court, accused of fighting with some neighbors.