The men remained at large late Saturday as law
enforcement personnel conducted an extensive manhunt radiating outward from the
Clinton Correctional Facility here, where residents hoped for a quick end to an
unprecedented occurrence.
Police officers in bulletproof vests and armed with
rifles manned roadblocks on routes leading to and from the town, peering into
cars and checking trunks as red flares lit up the pavement on a chilly night.
Floodlights filled the street around the
maximum-security facility, whose thick walls loomed high over the north side of
the town’s main street, which was closed to most traffic. Dozens of law
enforcement officials stood guard in a nearby neighborhood where the two
escapees had emerged from a manhole.
The New York State Police said the inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, had escaped
from the facility in Dannemora, an all-male maximum security prison about 170 miles
north of Albany near the Canadian border. Within hours, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo
had canceled a scheduled visit to theBelmont Stakes horse
race in Elmont, N.Y., to
meet with the police and prison officials.
After he was briefed by the officials, who took him on
a tour of the escape route, the governor took part in a news conference.
Officials described a plan that involved the use of power tools to drill
through steel walls and pipes.
“When you look at how the operation was done, it was
extraordinary,” Mr. Cuomo said.
The State Police said that Mr. Matt, 48, and Mr.
Sweat, 34, were discovered missing during a 5:30 a.m. bed check. Both men were
“a danger to the public,” and officials advised anyone who saw them not to
approach and to contact the police.
Officials said the men, who
lived in adjoining cells, drilled a hole through the steel wall at the back of
their cells and walked onto a catwalk. They then climbed down and used the
tools to drill through a maze of pipes and tunnels before exiting through a
manhole on a nearby street, officials said.
Anthony J. Annucci, the acting commissioner of the State Department of Corrections and
Community Supervision, said that officials did not know how the inmates
acquired the tools. The prison’s tools had been accounted for on Saturday
afternoon, he said, but officials were investigating whether the inmates could
have gotten tools from outside contractors doing construction at the prison.
Officials were also trying to
find out how the inmates knew their way out, he said.
“It may have been over a
period of time,” he said. “It may have been trial and error. We don’t know.”
Mr. Cuomo said the inmates had
used decoys made from sweatshirts to make it look like they were asleep in
their beds, deceiving corrections officers who check on them every two hours.
The discovery prompted an
immediate lockdown of the prison, which remained in effect late Saturday.
Officials said more than 200
law enforcement officers were involved in the search, along with helicopters,
K-9 units and bloodhounds. Maj. Charles Guess, the State Police commander of
the region, said the police and prison officials were conducting a full
investigation with local and state authorities, as well as the Federal Bureau
of Investigation and the United States Marshals Service.
The police described Mr. Matt
as 6 feet tall and weighing 210 pounds. He has black hair and hazel eyes,
officials said. He has a tattoo on his back that says “Mexico Forever,” hearts
tattooed on his chest and left shoulder and a Marine Corps insignia tattooed on
his right, according to the police.
Mr. Sweat is 5 feet, 11 inches
tall and weighs 165 pounds, the police said. He has brown hair and green eyes,
and tattoos on his left biceps and his right fingers, according to the police.
It was not Mr. Matt’s
first escape. Officials
said he had escaped from an Erie County jail in June 1986. He was eventually
caught and returned to prison, where he served time for that crime and for
forgery.
He has since been housed in
maximum security facilities, corrections officials said.
Mr. Matt was returned to state
prison in 1993 after an attempted burglary and served roughly three years
before he was released in February 1997, state records show.
By December of that year, he
had been rearrested and charged with murder in the killing of William
Rickerson, who was beaten to death and dismembered, in Tonawanda, N.Y. He was
convicted in 2008.
Before his trial he fled to
Mexico, where he was sentenced to 20 years for fatally stabbing another
American during an attempted robbery outside a bar. He was extradited to the
United States in 2007 to face trial for Mr. Rickerson’s murder.
At the time of the escape, Mr.
Matt was serving a sentence of 25 years to life with no chance for parole
before 2032.
For Mr. Sweat, the sentence
was life without parole for a 2002 killing of a Broome County, N.Y., deputy
sheriff. The police said he shot Deputy Kevin Tarsia 22 times, then stole
several items from the deputy’s patrol car, including his .40-caliber Glock pistol.
The police said Mr. Sweat had
been at the prison since 2003, and that Mr. Matt had arrived in 2008.
The photograph of Mr. Sweat
released on Saturday was taken on May 21. Mr. Matt’s photo had been taken the
day before.
Both men had “satisfactory”
disciplinary records in prison, according to corrections officials, with both
having just one episode on their records. (Mr. Matt was found to be in
possession of prohibited tattooing materials; Mr. Sweat harassed a fellow
inmate.)
The last known address for Mr.
Sweat was in Windsor, N.Y., according to state records; Mr. Matt’s last address
was in Tonawanda.
Mr. Cuomo petitioned residents
for help finding the men, but urged New Yorkers to act with caution.
“These are
dangerous people, and they are nothing to be trifled with,” Mr. Cuomo said.
The Clinton Correctional Facility was constructed in
1865. Officials said the last prison break in the New York State system
occurred over a decade ago, in 2003, when two convicted murderers broke out of
Elmira Correctional Facility in Elmira, N.Y. They were caught the next day.
The Clinton prison houses some 3,000
inmates in Dannemora, a village of about 1,700 people, Mayor Michael Bennett
said.
“A lot of people are staying in their house and
locking their doors,” he said. “There are other people outside, and kids are
riding their bikes.”
The prison is one of the largest employers in the
region, an outcrop of small, rural towns surrounded by farmlands, state forests
and Lake Champlain. Mr. Bennett has also worked for the prison for 18 years and
is currently a laundry supervisor.
“My brother works there, and a lot of my friends work
there,” he said. “Everybody up here one way or another has a family member
working for the Department of Corrections.”
Rich Green, 58, the owner of Auggy’s Pizza Shop, just
down the street from the prison, said the manhunt had transformed the “nice
little quiet town” into a place filled with law enforcement officials.
“The whole town’s
locked down,” he said. “You can’t drive anywhere. You can’t come into town.
They’ve got detours all over the place. They’re checking trunks. It’s just
something I’ve never seen before.”
He said that given the numbers of correction officers
who live in town and the number of ordinary townspeople who own guns, residents
were not especially afraid. “This is one of the safest places around,” he said.
Chris Pacheco, 56, who lives near the prison, said
police officers canvassed the neighborhood earlier in the day. He had asked
them to inspect an empty apartment beneath his, fearing that the fugitives
might have taken refuge there. They had not.
“It’s scary,” he said. “Obviously they’re not nice
guys.”
Mr. Pacheco worried that the area — wooded,
agricultural and dotted with empty buildings and barns — offered many places
for the escaped prisoners to hide. He said he suspected the prisoners had fled
Dannemora, but he was not taking any chances.
“I’ll make sure the doors are locked,” he said. “And
try to sleep light.”
Even a few towns away from Dannemora, residents
described watching a manhunt as though out of the movies.
“The place is crawling with cops,” said Andy Steuart,
the owner of Zachary’s Original, an Italian restaurant in Plattsburgh, east of
Dannemora.
Mr. Steuart said there is only one major road out of
Dannemora that connects to the nearby highways, which had him wondering how
they got away.
“Either they went out that road or bushwhacked over
the mountain,” he said, referring to Lyon Mountain. He added, “If they went out
that way, God bless them. It’s a thick forest out here.”
The inmates did not leave without saying goodbye,
according to a picture posted to Twitter by Gareth Rhodes, the governor’s
deputy press secretary. It shows a yellow Post-it note next to a hole cut in a
pipe. On the note, a caricature of a man wearing a conical hat appears above
the words: “Have a nice day!”
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