Boy involved in armed standoff in custody

Aerial photos around the McGuckin family home

SANDPOINT, Idaho (CNN) -- One of six children who have kept police at bay for three days with guns and 27 vicious dogs has left the Idaho home where the children have been holed up and is now in protective custody.

Officials said Ben McGuckin, 15, went to a neighbor, who contacted law enforcement officials.

"We didn't know where he was. We thought he probably was in the house," said Phil Robinson, Bonner County prosecutor. "We're not approaching the house, we're so far back on the perimeter, but yesterday afternoon probably between 4 and 5 sometime, he'd gone to a neighbor, and the neighbor contacted ... law enforcement and then brought him in."

Edgar Steele, who claims to be the McGuckin family attorney, said Benjamin had "been walking around in the woods for two days."

Five other children -- Kathryn, 16, Mary, 13, James, 11, Frederick, 9, and Jane, 8 -- are believed still at the house. Two other children live elsewhere.

The stalemate began Tuesday after police arrested the children's mother, JoAnn McGuckin, on felony charges of injuring a child. The children released the dogs on sheriff's deputies when they came to the home to take the children into protective custody.

VIDEO CNN's Lilian Kim reports on the standoff between police and six armed children in northern Idaho (May 31) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)    CNN ACCESS Idaho standoff neighbor: 'It's very bad with the dogs'    MESSAGE BOARD Idaho standoff

JoAnn McGuckin is due in court today to seek a bail reduction.

Another Ruby Ridge?

Neighbors said Thursday that the children are afraid their family would be split up if they gave themselves up to police.

"We have a lot of people who care about them here, and I hope they can realize that we're not trying to do bad to them," neighbor Mary Peters told CNN. "We're trying to help them. We don't want to split their family up. We want their family to have help."

Steele has suggested the standoff has attracted the attention of anti-government groups.

"Now some of these people, I've seen some of the Internet reports, seem to think somehow that this is another Ruby Ridge in the making," Steele said. "No one has seen a gun in the hands of these kids yet. There have been no gunshots fired. All this business about kids armed with guns and 27 dogs -- well, I guess the dogs are true, I've seen them myself; I haven't seen a gun, though."

Ruby Ridge was the 1992 shootout in Idaho in which the wife and son of white separatist Randy Weaver were killed during a standoff with federal agents.

Steele said Internet reports say anti-government groups are moving into northern Idaho.

"If this is really true, then I'll tell you something, the sheriff's department, promulgating this nonsense about these kids being without food and water, is only going to add fuel to the fire, and the sheriff is going to regret passing out this story, setting up a stage for these people to have a justification for confrontation with local government," said Steele.

Conditions at the McGuckin homestead have been a point of contention. It was initially described as having no water or electricity. The sheriff's office has since said it believes the home has some sort of running water and that electricity had been run to the house at some point in recent years.

It's believed the remaining children at the house have at least limited food available to them. The Bonner Community Food Center said the McGuckin family had been getting mostly non-perishable food on a regular basis over the past three years, but may not have had much extra food.

Neighbors tried to help

Bonner County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Robert Rahn said the family had cut all ties with extended family and neighbors. The husband died about two weeks ago after being bedridden for several years with multiple sclerosis, Rahn said.

Peters said neighbors tried to help the mother and her children, but the mother turned them away.

"Everyone was afraid to go there, because of the dogs and because maybe we'd be met with a shotgun," Peters said. "We were very unwelcome. We were helpless."

Bonner County Sheriff Phil Jarvis described the dogs as vicious and said they had recently killed a small moose.

"We were very afraid of the dogs," said Peters. "I have a friend who was bit by one of the dogs trying to go over there to help."

Jarvis wouldn't give details of the charge against the children's mother but said that it "comes from long-term neglect of the kids" who haven't been to school for some time.