An Alabama boy was beginning his fourth day of captivity in an underground bunker Friday with a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran who allegedly shot dead a school bus driver, but the five-year-old has received medicine he needs, plus crayons and coloring books.

Hostage negotiators have been talking to the boy’s captor through a lengthy PVC pipe, but there was no sign of progress. Police told Alabama media Thursday that the man has been known to stay in the bunker as long as eight days.

The boy, a 5-year-old named Ethan known to his mother as “Love Bug,” was apparently unharmed, a state senator said Thursday.

His family, which has not spoken publicly since the abduction, was “holding on by a thread,” a state representative told NBC’s TODAY. “We are all just hoping this can come to a safe end,” Rep. Steve Clouse said.

Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, a Vietnam veteran described by authorities as a loner with anti-government suspicions and by neighbors as a paranoid menace, is suspected of taking the boy after storming his school bus Tuesday afternoon. School bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was slain.

More from Erin McClam @NBC News

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