World

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

In this Tuesday, Jan 29, 2013 photo, residents look over the school bus where a shooting occurred near Destiny Church along U.S. 231, just north of Midland City, Ala. on Tuesday. 

MIDLAND CITY, Ala. - Police teams swarmed a rural U.S. property Wednesday where a man accused of fatally shooting the driver of a school bus and fleeing with a 6-year-old passenger was thought to be hiding in a homemade bunker. Neighbors were evacuated, and one said she had been startled this week by the suspect's stare.

The man boarded the bus in Midland City, Alabama, on Tuesday afternoon and shot the driver when he refused to let the child off, Dale County Sheriff Wally Olsen told WBMA-TV.

The shooter then took the child, authorities said.

County coroner Woodrow Hilboldt told The Associated Press the standoff continued early Wednesday.

"That's what has been described to me as an underground bunker. Someplace to get out of the way of a tornado," Hilboldt said.

About 50 vehicles from law enforcement agencies were clustered at the mouth of a dirt road that leads to the suspect's property. Reporters were being held back from the area and couldn't see the home.

The coroner said the victim, who was in his mid-60s, died of multiple gunshot wounds. He wouldn't release a name until family had been notified.

Nearby residents were evacuated from their homes as a precaution, said Rachel David, a spokeswoman for the police department in the nearby town of Dothan.

"Authorities also confirmed the presence of a child at the scene but are giving no further information at this time," David said in a news release late Tuesday.