He loved he was his hobby was being an auto mechanic and really it was amazing to see this Community Come together and call this man a hero for what he did. We spoke with his son and daughter last week and they were just torn apart and his daughter told me that, you know, people are calling him a hero, but hes been a hero all her life. So they have been remembering him for the past few days. Yesterday was his funeral, and this community has been really shocked about what happened here. Okay. Well, we are awaiting a press conference. We know that the hostage standoff has come to an end. When were you alerted to matters being resolved from where youre standing . Because obviously youre being held some distance away, but when did it become more obvious to you that something was going on . Reporter well, it was a short time ago, martin, really a few minutes before we came on the air. We noticed some activity up that road. Weve been, you know, watching this situation with cameras. We have not been broadcasting those live pictures because of the ongoing nature of this hostage situation and weve been very careful not to broadcast any of those pictures, but we did hear some sort of boom, unclear what that boom is, and then we heard some s. W. A. T. Members, some activity, and that happened at times before but we werent sure exactly what that meant. This time we did see some officials come out and they seemed to be in not such a worried mood anymore but a little bit just there was some change in the mood, but what we did see was an ambulance come down that hill, and that signified that something significant was going on. Within a few seconds of that really, there was an official that came up to where the media is gathered slightly out of breath and said that wed be getting a press conference within a few minutes, and that was about 20 minutes to half an hour ago, and he said that there would be officials there from different agencies. So again were still awaiting that News Conference and well certainly bring you that information as soon as we get it. And were now hearing from the Associated Press that a boom was heard and a gunshot. Reporter i cant speak to the gunshot, martin, but thats what the Associated Press is saying. Reporter thats right. We did hear some sort of boom. I cannot confirm whether it was a gunshot or not. Certainly we should find out within the next few minutes exactly the nature of that boom and possible gunshot according to the Associated Press. But again, a very this has been quite an ordeal for this entire community over the past few days and to hear from the Dale County Sheriffs Office, a source within that department, that this standoff has come to a resolution, certainly a lot of people will want to find out exactly what happened. Weve also been watching pictures of what appeared to be fbi and Law Enforcement sort of highfiving as if some kind of conclusion had actually happened. Were seeing pictures now. Did you observe them . Did you hear anything that they were saying . Reporter well, we are quite a Long Distance away. If you can see behind me. Those pictures were taken from our Camera Position with a zoom pretty much all the way on. But thats the dirt road leading up to the bunker. Right now its jimmy dykes property. We did see some Law Enforcement officials shaking hands and highfiving. However, you know, that seems to suggest that there might be some sort of positive outcome here, but again we just dont know that at this point and we dont want to speculate on what exactly happened, but it does seem to suggest that it could be a positive outcome. Again, we dont want to speculate. I need to report to you, gabe, that our justice correspondent Pete Williams is reporting that a Law Enforcement official says initial reports are that the kidnapper in alabama is dead and the boy is okay. Reporter okay. Well, thats news to me, martin. Again, you know, ive been with you for the past few minutes and we do not know here on the scene that has not been reported to us. But it did seem there was some excitement from Law Enforcement officials if it is true that the child was found safe. So well just have to wait and see over the next few minutes once officials come here and tell us exactly what happened. But you did mention earlier that you saw an ambulance moving. Is that right . Reporter that is correct. That would seem to suggest that the child might have been brought out on that ambulance. We dont know that for sure, but we had not seen that ambulance come down that dirt road before, and it was around the same time we heard that boom, when we heard that activity, and, you know, were just really waiting to find out, and certainly if that is true, that this child made it out, that would be an incredible relief for this community. Midland city, alabama, is a small town, about 2,400 people, and they have just been rocked by this standoff the past few days. About 140 hours at this point, and people here are tired because theyve been praying for the past few days. Theyve been watching this unfold and really hoping that this would turn have a peaceful resolution, and theyve been putting up ribbons, Holding Prayer Vigils every night, praying for 5yearold e ethan to survive that horrible ordeal. Gabe, do stay with us, because we will come to you if this press conference occurs in the next few minutes. Joining us now is former fbi profiler clint van zandt. Clint, are you on the line with us . Yes, i am, martin. What is your reaction to hearing the news that this hostage standoff appears to have been resolved snt o edresolved . Our justice correspondent Pete Williams is reporting that initial reports is that the kidnapper in alabama is dead but the boy is okay. Obviously, you would want everybody to come out of this alive, martin, but my background as an fbi Hostage Negotiator is that you would work very hard, and im sure the negotiators did these last seven days, building some type of positive relationship not only between themselves and jimmy lee dykes, but making every positive nuance they could get to connect him with that little boy. Realize that mr. Dykes we know was a father himself. He has a grown adult daughter. So all of these things would be very subtly rolled into the negotiations, and should mr. Dykes be deceased at his own hands or at the hands of Law Enforcement, obviously thats a shame, but the thing that we want to see in a situation like this is, number one, we want the hostage to come out alive. Number two, we want to protect Law Enforcement, and, number three, the hostage taker pretty much makes his own choice. For seven days they have extended to him the hand to come on out of that bunker and surrender himself. For seven days hes turned that down. He either made a decision himself today or Law Enforcement made a decision they were going to resolve it, and the positive thing is this little boy turning 6 on wednesday, he will be with his family to celebrate that birthday. Well, as i say, our justice correspondent Pete Williams is reporting that a Law Enforcement official says initial reports are that the kidnapper in alabama is dead but the boy is okay. Clint, what would have provoked the team to act today as opposed to waiting another 24 hours . You get to a point in these situations, martin, where youre constantly doing this cost benefit analysis where youre trying to say, is there a reason today to go . Has the threat to the hostage, in this case this 5yearold boy, has that threat increased based upon the time that this has taken place, based upon the medicine that he is or is not taking, and based upon the emotional response of the hostage taker himself. If Law Enforcement felt that that threat was being increased within that bunker, one way or the other, they may have made a decision for a tactical resolution. Thats the last thing they want to do, as you know, martin. Theres not theres nothing there, and having done if for 25 years i can tell you, theres nothing within the fbi or Law Enforcement that would want to go to guns, but, again, in your worst case scenario, theyve had seven days to practice a tactical entry. If in fact, that was part of the resolution, im sure they did it, and im sure they did it very efficiently and realize in those close proximity that they had to get in there, one way or the other they either devised a plan or mr. Dykes by his own hands. One way or the other, they got this 5yearold boy out, and, martin, as you know, children are resilient. Its a terrible seven dayins th little boy has gone through, but now they will work hard building positive memories and ideas and thoughts he thoughts. Hell be with his family. Theres a strong probability he will recover psychologically from this. That community that lost a bus driver that was a tremendously tragic loss, theyre going to have to deal with that memory for the rest of their lives, too. Clint, you outlined the psychological challenges for the team in trying to assess the hostage taker, but this was also a challenging environmental set of circumstances. This was not a house. This was some kind of bunker, wasnt it . What are the specific challenges that are thrown up by some kind of underground setting . Number one, there was only one way in and one way out. Were told this bunker was approximately 4 to 6 feet by 6 to 8 feet. It was about 4 feet underground. There was a set of steps that led down to it. Martin, if you can imagine a worse case scenario, one way in, one way out, and the subject, mr. Dykes is down there, hes armed, he has his hostage, and everything that you would think of normally where, you know, you could come through different windows and doors or you could use listening devices or a lot of different things, all of the tools that Law Enforcement has that were denied them on this, and they had to get in to neutralize for lack of a better term the hostage taker and to try to find a way to get in without injury to that little boy. Martin, thats a very tough decision. If, i say if, Law Enforcement made a decision to go in tactically, im sure there were elements of local and state police, the fbi, negotiators, tactical team, hostage rescue team. Thats their job, to do Something Like this, martin. But just because its your job doesnt mean you want to do it and doesnt mean that the results are always going to be good. In this situation, it appears that it is, and i think the community had a lot of reason to have gratitude for all levels of Law Enforcement because the bottom line is the prize in this, if you would, is getting that little boy out alive. You know, martin, i have seen these situations over the years where children have fallen down wells, and entire communities surround that well 24 or 48 hours. Here is a situation again, an underground situation, and a community pulled together cheering for the little boy and hoping upon hope that he would be rescued. It looks like he was. Indeed it does, and the mayors office, clint, is reporting that the child himself, little 5yearold ethan, about to turn 6 years of age, is actually en route to the hospital. Im also presuming, clint, that anxieties must have been even more raised because this individual, jimmy lee dykes, had already shot someone. Had already killed someone on that school bus. This was a man who was indicating the propensity to kill. And this is someone, martin, at least in his own mind may well have felt he had nothing to lose and no reason to come out. And that, again, was the additional challenge for the negotiator to try to give him a reason to live, to try to give him a reason to release that little boy unharmed. And, again, thats what they would have been doing very carefully for these last seven days is building a scenario where as a negotiator wed say, jimmy lee, we know you have this little boy down there. We know youre responsible. We understand that, and just like the sheriff said within the last couple days, we know hes going to take care of him and we appreciate that. You play on and i say that very positively, you work with, play on that maternal instinct. Martin, sometimes in the very worst of us, there is that element of goodness that you can grab hold of and build on. That may well have been something negotiators were able to do in this case. And presumably the individual himself being the father of a child, a daughter, a grownup daughter, presumably they must have tried to link in some way his sense of pa ter nal feelings towards his own child and that of the child that he was holding, little 5yearold ethan. You would go back you know, part of this is based upon the intelligence information you have, but lets say hypothetically you knew, in fact, that he had been a parent, he had been at a home where he had contact with his daughter at the time she was 5. You would build upon that. Jimmy lee, remember when your daughter was 5, and remember if she was gone from the house an hour or so the anxiety you would feel as a parent. You can imagine that same level of anxiety that you share with ethans parents. And those are things that negotiators would talk about time and time again, and its just like filling a sandbag. How do you fill a sandbag . You do it one shovel at a time. Psychologically, you have one thought, one idea at a time and you build and you build and you build on that, and eventually you fill the bag or you build a wall of ideas and hopefully that wall was there to protect this child. Sheriff wally olson of dale county referring to the individual hostage taker, jimmy lee dykes said, and im quoting the sheriff, he feels like he has a story thats important to him. Although its very complex, were trying to make a safe environment. What kind of story would an individual have that would prompt them to take a 5yearold child hostage having killed the bus driver of a School Vehicle . Well, i think there may have been a number of things going on with mr. D ykes. Number one, were told by friends and neighbors that he didnt like government for whatever his reason. Number two, that he had conflicts with his neighbors. So all of these scenarios that were going on, he may have felt, for example, martin, that he was the victim, that he was being oppressed. That, in fact, even with the shooting of the bus driver, and realize i only say this from a negotiators perspective to try to minimize what he did in his own mind, the negotiator could build a scenario to the effect that, jimmy lee, you didnt mean to shoot the bus driver. You went on board, you had a gun to protect yourself. That gun went off accidentally. Now, is that the truth . Obviously we believe otherwise, but if youre in that situation, if you are the gunman, if you are the kidnapper, you want to believe that and why did he kidnap that little boy . We may find out he thought he was protecting himself. He was building his own shield between himself and Law Enforcement. And what happens, martin, people dont think these things out. Realize, he had two years to build this underground bunker, but he probably had less than two minutes to make a decision what he was going to do once he got on that bus. So he didnt make the right decision, but as we all find out, martin, we make decisions that we have to live with and in some cases die because of. Were hearing reports, as you say, about him having had conflicts with his neighbors, that he didnt like government, and that he was some form of doomsday prepper. Fill out for us, if you can, the kind of psychology of an individual who may take the view that in some way theyre threatened by the nation or feel themselves at the whim of the nation and government. I think that its easy for people to become he estranged f society. Take somebody like the unabomber. When you get negative ideas about other people, when you blame other people, its not like we could talk together and you could say, clint, i understand what youre saying but have you considered the following. When youre basically one person and you say who is at fault . Who is to blame . You are the only vote that counts, and when your hand goes up and says i blame government, i blame my neighbors, i blame my neighborhood, i blame everybody else but me, that vote starts to take unique significance, and it becomes a selffulfilling prophecy. Okay. Former fbi profiler clint van zan zandt. Clint, do stay with us. Im joined by our justice correspondent Pete Williams. And, pete, what can you tell us . Well, martin, two Law Enforcement officials have told us that the scenario weve understood is correct, that the boy has been recovered. Hes safe. That that ambulance that was seen driving away that people thought might have the boy, this one official says, yes, thats correct, that ambulance was driving away with this 5yearold boy who was taken away. They say that the officials on the scene, the Law Enforcement officials on the scene, actually somehow went into the bunker, got into the bunker from underground and shot the kidnapper. We dont know at this point precisely how they managed to get inside this buried bunker, but thats what happened were told by two officials, that the kidnapper was shot, that the boy was rescued safely and has been taken away in an ambulance. Because as i understand it, pete, there was only one way in and out of this bunker. So if that reporting is correct, is it possible that they found another means of accessing the bunker . They broke in as it were . They opened another access point . The answer to your question is its possible, yes. I just dont know how they did it. This official i talked to wasnt precisely sure how they did it but was wellinformed enough to know they had gotten into the bunker and thats how they managed to pull this off this afternoon. But how they did it, whether they used the existing method or some other method, i dont know, but apparently these officials have been talking for several days about the need to do Something Like this or what they would do if the time came when there was a