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The yellow Dale County school bus was processed for evidence and authorities drove it Friday down the dirt road, away from the bunker, before a wrecker hauled it away.
Dykes had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump. Neighbor Claudia Davis said he yelled and fired shots at her, her son and her baby grandson over damage Dykes claimed their pickup truck did to a makeshift speed bump in the dirt road. No one was hurt.
The son, James Davis Jr., believes Tuesday’s shooting was connected to the court date. "I believe he thought I was going to be in court and he was going to get more charges than the menacing, which he deserved, and he had a bunch of stuff to hide and that’s why he did it."
Neighbors described a number of other run-ins with Dykes in the time since he moved to this small rural town near the Georgia and Florida borders, a region known for peanut farming.
A neighbor directly across the street, Brock Parrish, said Dykes usually wore overalls and glasses and his posture was hunched-over. He said Dykes usually drove a run-down "creeper" van with some of the windows covered in aluminum foil.
Parrish often saw him digging in his yard, as if he was preparing to lay down a driveway or building foundation. He lived in a small camping trailer there and patrolled his lawn at night, walking from corner to corner with a flashlight and a long gun.
Court records showed Dykes was arrested in Florida in 1995 for improper exhibition of a weapon, but the misdemeanor was dismissed. The circumstances of the arrest were not detailed in his criminal record. He was also arrested for marijuana possession in 2000.
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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington; Phillip Rawls in Midland City; Bob Johnson in Montgomery, Ala., and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
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