Man with child hostage in Alabama holing up in bunker, police say

MOBILE, Alabama (Reuters) - A standoff continued early on Wednesday with a gunman who boarded an Alabama school bus and fatally shot the driver before fleeing with a young child and holing up in an underground bunker, authorities said.

Dale County Coroner Woodrow Hilboldt confirmed the bus driver had been killed in the shooting Tuesday afternoon as children were being ferried home from school.

The gunman fled to a bunker on his property after the shooting, Alabama media reported. Hilboldt said it was his understanding that the child, variously identified by local media as 5 or 6 years old, was barricaded with the gunman in "some kind of a tornado bunker."

Local law enforcement gave scant details about the incident, but confirmed that one person had been killed and a child was present at the scene in Midland City.

Hilboldt said both the gunman and bus driver were in their 60s.

Law enforcement officials from multiple agencies were convened near the bunker on Wednesday as the standoff with the shooter continued overnight, said Dothan Police Sergeant Rachel David.

The shooting comes as national debate rages over gun violence, especially in schools, after a gunman shot dead 20 students and six staff members at a Connecticut elementary school last month.

Alabama media reported that the incident on Tuesday happened at approximately 4 p.m. local time when the suspect demanded the driver let a student off the bus.

When the driver refused, the man boarded the bus, then shot the driver before taking the child and fleeing the scene.

"I spoke to about three or four of the students," Michael Senn, a local minister whose church is near the scene, told Alabama NBC affiliate WSFA.

"One of them was a young lady and she told me that when the man entered the bus ... he told most of them to get off the bus and he grabbed a 5-year-old little boy," Senn said.

"From what I understand, kids were running down the road behind the church trying to get to safety."

One resident of the area who arrived quickly on the scene said he tried to chase the suspect before he realized that the gunman had taken cover in his own private bunker.

The sheriff's department said multiple agencies were assisting with the incident, and local schools would be closed on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Kaija Wilkinson; Additional reporting and writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Nick Zieminski)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/man-shoots-school-bus-driver-alabama-child-seized-015512702.html

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