By Sara Ward
Associate Editor
Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired truck driver was a standoffish, unsocial Vietnam Navy veteran who was known to go out in the middle of the night to shoot birds and rabbits. He constructed a 4-feet-wide, 6-feet-long bunker about eight feet deep and covered it in sand near his house.
Not your typical activities for an older, retired man, huh?
This strange behavior should have set off warning bells to those who knew him, but instead it led to a Jan. 29 hostage situation involving a 6-year-old child and a slain school bus driver, according to a Jan. 30 USA Today article.
Dykes, who was supposed to appear in court Jan. 30 to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute over a speed bump, stepped onto a school bus in rural Midland City, Ala. and asked for two boys, according to the same article. When the bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., put out his arm to block him from going into the aisle of the bus, Dykes fired four shots with a handgun, killing the bus driver.
The suspect then took a 6-year-old boy to his bunker and, as of Wednesday afternoon, had still not released him.
While it’s easy to judge after the fact and say more could have been done to prevent a situation like this, I really do believe that Dykes could have been stopped before he committed these crimes.
Mike Smith, who lives across the street from Dykes, said Wednesday in a Jan. 30 Huffington Post article that Dykes once threatened to shoot his children when the family’s dog entered his property.
If Dykes had already threatened to kill his neighbors simply because their dog wandered over to his property, why wasn’t anything reported then, and why wasn’t his behavior taken more seriously? I understand he was already being brought into court on other charges involving an argument with neighbors anyway, but clearly more should have been done before now since he displayed violent actions and behavior in the past.
Dykes was also known to distrust the government and have post-traumatic stress disorder, said Tim Byrd, chief investigator with the Dale County Sheriff’s Office in the USA Today article. Byrd described Dykes as having “anti-America” views and ties with the antigovernment “survivalist” movement.
Mental illness is no excuse for hurting other people, but I think if Dykes’ friends, family and neighbors had reported something or tried to get him help, this kind of tragedy might never have occurred because Dykes would have been able to work through his problems.
It’s hard to predict something of this magnitude taking place, but there were definite warning signs that Dykes was not quite with it. It takes a lot of effort to notice and pay attention to people’s odd actions. However, it’s worth it to tell someone because it could save lives.
If nothing else, I think this event should be a wake-up call for everyone. As neighbors, friends and family members, we should stay alert and pay attention if someone seems to be acting strange.
It’s easy to ignore things around us. No one wants to be the boy who cried wolf, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. So many tragedies like this one would never even have the chance to exist if public awareness became more important.
