shootings

Shooter Kills School Bus Driver, Takes Child Hostage in Alabama

Via WTVY-TV/CBS. Photo: WTVY-TV/CBS

On Tuesday afternoon, a man boarded a school bus in Midland City, Alabama, shot the driver, and took a 6-year-old boy to his underground bunker, where he was still holding the child early on Wednesday morning. NBC News reports that the man boarded the bus and demanded two children between the ages of 6 and 8. When the bus driver refused, the man shot her four times and snatched the boy. “The one child he got a hold of actually fainted,” said Mike Creel, a neighbor who talked to the other children. “That was the reason he was able to grab him. And now he is hidden in his homemade bomb shelter.”

Creel says his neighbor moved in about two years ago and immediately started building the underground room. Authorities are negotiating with the suspect through a PVC pipe, and Alabama State Troopers, a SWAT team, and FBI agents have been called to the scene. They say the child appears to be “okay” but the situation is “delicate.”

School Bus Driver Shot, Child Taken Hostage