The Wall Street Journal gave us an indepth look at a hostage situation in Alabama in 2013. This incredible story of a loner with a message taking on a bus driver and stealing a young boy plays out like a movie. The Journal uses graphics, 911 calls, video interviews and of course powerful writing to tell the tale of a supremely coordinated mission to save a boy held captive in a bunker. It’s a captivating read and story of working together.
On Jan. 29, 2013, a volatile man with a grudge against the government kidnapped a 5-year-old boy from a school bus in Midland City, Ala., and held him by force in an underground bunker. It was one of the most difficult and dangerous hostage cases ever handled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Wall Street Journal has assembled this account from interviews and exclusive access to audio and video recordings, drone images, private letters, police photographs and law-enforcement documents.
Mr. Poland told his wife that Mr. Dykes seemed like a man in need of a friend. So the next morning, Tuesday, Jan. 29, Mr. Poland left a dozen fresh eggs and a jar of homemade muscadine grape jelly in the front seat of Mr. Dykes’s van, along with a note.
“Sorry I missed you,” Mr. Poland wrote. “See you later.”
Mr. Dykes gave the jelly to a neighbor and kept the note in his wallet, next to a scrap of paper with phone numbers for the White House and U.S. Senate, as well as a receipt for a handgun seized by police 13 years earlier.
At 3:32 p.m., Mr. Poland, wearing his usual suspenders, again backed his bus into the turnaround by the laurel oak trees. He saw Mr. Dykes approach, carrying, as promised, a plastic Wal-Mart bag overflowing with broccoli.
Mr. Poland opened the door. Mr. Dykes, wearing bluejeans, sunglasses and a green baseball cap, climbed aboard and pulled out a Ruger pistol.
He handed Mr. Poland a neatly printed letter that began: “I have a story to tell.” It ordered Mr. Poland to select two well-behaved boys with no mental or physical problems and to cuff them together with a black zip tie.
“No harm will come to the kids,” the letter said. “When the story is finished, they will go free and I will die.”
Mr. Dykes promised consequences if Mr. Poland refused.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” he told the driver. “I want two kids, six to eight years old. I mean it. Right now. Right now. Two kids. Six to eight years old. Get it. Get it. Make a move, I’ll shoot ya. Do it.”
“Sorry,” Mr. Poland said in an even voice. “You’re going to have to shoot me.”
The children ducked down behind seats and then popped up to see what was happening. Tré Watts, 16 years old, was in the second-to-last row. He stopped playing NBA JAM on his iPhone and called 911.
“Where is your emergency?” asked the operator, Brittin Norris.
“We’re on the bus and someone’s trying to take our kids,” Tré said.
“Somebody on the bus is trying to take a kid?” Ms. Norris said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mr. Dykes, pistol in one hand and zip tie in the other, summoned several children forward—a boy in red, a girl in the back seat. No one budged.
Then he turned to Ethan Gilman. The 5-year-old boy was impulsive and easily distracted. His mother told people he was autistic, which is why he was in the front seat, under Mr. Poland’s watchful eye. Ethan was heavy for his age. He was frightened of stairs.
“Come here, come on, come on,” Mr. Dykes yelled at the boy.
“He’s scared to death,” Mr. Poland objected.
“You will not be harmed, son,” Mr. Dykes said.
Mr. Poland stayed in his seat and wouldn’t let anyone move.
“I’m going to have to shoot you now,” Mr. Dykes yelled. “Go on. I don’t have any time. The goddamn law is coming. Come on. Don’t! Don’t!”
Mr. Poland, in a steady, quiet voice, said: “I can’t do it. I can’t.”
Mr. Dykes fired one shot. Mr. Poland let out a cry. The bus rolled backward through the trees, shadows fluttering over the seats. Four seconds later, Mr. Dykes fired another shot, then three more.
Mr. Poland slumped against the side window, blood seeping through his T-shirt. The bus slowed to a halt.
The 911 operator heard the children scream.
“Oh, my gosh. What’s going on?” she asked Tré.
“The bus driver’s dead,” Tré said.
“The what?”
“The bus driver’s dead.”
“Hang in there, baby, hang in there,” Ms. Norris told him. “Just get down.”
Mr. Dykes tore Ethan from his seat and wrestled him down the bus stairs. He hoisted the boy onto his shoulder and carried him away. “Mama,” a girl bawled. “Mommy!”
This video shows footage from inside the bus that contains disturbing images and language, including the audio of gun shots that killed the driver and scenes of children in distress.
Two girls moved toward the driver. “Mr. Poland,” they screamed. He didn’t respond. The students clambered off the bus and ran down the dirt road toward Destiny Church.
Mr. Dykes was winded by the time he had maneuvered Ethan into the underground hideout. He, too, called 911.
“I have a hostage,” he said between jagged breaths. “…I’m in an underground bunker.”
The call cut off, and Mr. Dykes rang back. He told the operator that police could talk to him only through a white PVC pipe by the front gate.
The 4-inch-wide pipe emerged straight out of the ground about 5 feet and then turned 90 degrees, like a periscope.
The bunker was about 170 feet away, behind Mr. Dykes’s trailer, his van and the shipping container. It lay beneath a raised mound of earth secured on one side by a waist-high cinder-block wall. The entrance on top was covered by a heavy wooden hatch, about 2 feet by 4 feet, and accessible by a six-step cinder-block staircase.
