Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Missing New York prisoners: Police hunt after 'sightings'

by Biodun Iginla, BBC News, New York

1 hour ago


Police have launched a major search operation after a reported sighting of two convicted killers who escaped from a prison in New York state.
Richard Matt and David Sweat went missing from the prison in Dannemora, near the Canadian border, on 6 June.
Officers descended on the hamlet of Friendship, 300 miles (480km) to the south, near the border with Pennsylvania.
Officers were also looking at another site in a neighbouring county.
Police said they were responding to a sighting in Friendship of two men walking along a railway.
They reportedly searched every vehicle along the Interstate 86 road and ordered all residents to stay indoors overnight.
Much of the search appeared to centre on dense woodland, with nearly 150 police officers involved.
Police said there had also been a sighting matching the men's description a week ago in Steuben County, New York, which is next to Allegany County, where Friendship is located.
Another search took place in Steuben County, focusing on a building site in the town of Erwin.

Matt, 49, was convicted of the kidnap, torture and dismemberment of his former boss, whose body was found in pieces in a river.
Sweat, 35, was serving life for his part in the killing of a sheriff's deputy who witnessed stolen guns being handled.
They cut through brick and steel at the Clinton Correctional Facility, before crawling through an underground pipe.
They then emerged from a manhole outside the prison's 40-foot (12-metre) walls.

They left a taunting note for prison authorities to find.
Workshop instructor Joyce Mitchell, 51, has appeared in court accused of befriending the two men and giving them contraband.
She also planned to be the pair's getaway driver, but changed her mind at the last minute, investigators say.


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