School Bus Shooting in Dale County Alabama

[Bunny]

At 3:30pm this afternoon a 67 year old male stepped up into a school bus and held a gun up to the driver and demanded that the driver give him 2 kids between the ages of 6-8. The driver then refused the man, slammed the bus in reverse and pressed the gas pedal quickly. An alarm went off on the bus and then the gunman shot the driver 3-4 times and killed him. The gunman then took one boy hostage. So far they know the boys name is Ethan, He is 5 yrs old and He has autism. The gunman is holding him hostage on his property in a bunker. Negotiators are on the scene and the gunman has allowed the boy to take his meds. The gunman is said to be a Vietnam Vet and his neighbours say He has always seemed a little off. it is a stand off for now. The F.B.I. and S.W.A.T. teams are there.

All the other children that were on the bus escaped safely and were reunited with their parents.

This is still happening as i type. This is only 30 mins from my house. My thoughts and prayers go out to the bus drivers family and the boy being held hostage. I think that driver is a hero.

I am trying to find a decent link to the story. Maybe i can post it later.

(This post was last modified: 01-30-2013, 01:53 AM by Bunny.)

[Spud17]

I found this on cnn... details are still trickling through. Hope this doesn't turn out to be another tragedy-story that highlights failings in the mental-health system.

[Bunny]

Its 10am my time and the man is still holding the boy hostage. I really hope they rescue the child soon.

[AliShibaz]

Looks like it's all over and worked out OK.

WWW.WXYZ.COM

Page Not Found

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5-year-old hostage safe, kidnapper dead after week-long standoff in Alabama

(This post was last modified: 02-04-2013, 05:56 PM by AliShibaz.)

[Mark]

Yes all is well. Just one guy died . . . not bad for a day's work.

[AliShibaz]

In my above post I said, "Looks like it's all over and worked out OK".

But coming back and looking at that, I am not happy with that because, of course, it is not OK. The people involved were real lucky in the way it worked out. But nothing was done to prevent this from happening again.

As a matter of fact, it's almost certain that it will happen again.

The real tragedy is that no one seems to be actively working towards a way to prevent these kinds of incidents from happening in the future and our society seems to be rapidly encountering these kinds of situations more and more often.

One idea that people put forward is to ban all guns. But that just ain't gonna happen and even if that is part of the solution, I think it has to be put forward as one part of the solution.

For example, guns should be denied to people with any history of criminal behavior or violent behavior to others. In addition, there are several other categories in which guns should be banned to people. But it is still not good enough because evil-doers can still steal guns or buy them from other evil-doers.

So, if we want to put an end to these kinds of incidents, we need to integrate the banning of guns together with some other solution and that would probably include some kind of education from early ages awa reporting systems so that anyone can call a number and report a person or a behavior or a suspicious incident in such a way that it would be investigated.

But that is still not enough - not nearly enough. Anyone else care to add some other elements to a package of what we need to do to stop these kinds of incidents? Or at least curtail the large number of them?

(This post was last modified: 03-13-2013, 05:56 PM by AliShibaz.)