The two convicted murderers were discovered missing Saturday morning from the New York prison in Dannemora, about 15 miles west of the New York shore of Lake Champlain. A road was temporarily closed while police searched homes in the area surrounding Dannemora.
“If they are not good in the woods, it’s an instant trap when they get out”, Gilliam, also a onetime Navy SEAL, told CNN.
An unnamed source told CNN that Joyce Mitchell, who worked at the prison, had planned to pick up Matt, 48 and Sweat, 34, after they escaped, but changed her mind at the last minute. Superintendent Jonathan Parks says a key concern is that a number of roads that have been closed for the fugitive search are main arteries for their school buses.
Sweat, also a white male, is 5-foot-11, 165 pounds, with brown hair and green eyes, according to state police.
DANNEMORA, N.Y. - Police blocked off the main road outside a northern New York village as authorities on Thursday concentrated their sixth day of searching for two escaped murderers on a swampy area just a couple of miles from the prison the convicts broke out of last weekend.
Police said they have not arrested or charged anyone with a crime.
Cuomo has taken a prominent public role in the aftermath of the prisoner’s escape, appearing on a number of national television programs to discuss the search and leading a number of news conferences on the topic.
The 170-year-old, 3,000-inmate prison has a particularly notorious reputation, singled out in a watchdog report past year for a higher rate of violence among inmates than most New York state prisons. “They’ve made United States feel as secure as possible in this temporary new reality”. “I am confident we are going to find them, the only question is when”.
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said the search area had expanded to his state. Shumlin said, “We have information that suggests that they thought that New York was going to be ‘hot, ’ Vermont would be ‘cooler’ in terms of law enforcement, and that a camp in Vermont might be a better place to be than New York“.
They escaped from the maximum security prison in Dannemora using power tools to cut through walls and steam pipes before emerging from a manhole about two blocks from the Clinton Correctional facility.
“I got the shakes, it’s a lot of excitement”, he said.
Vermont police are doing their part in the search for two escaped killers.
The authorities hope such a turn of events may have left the inmates with few options to leave the area, after they emerged in Dannemora, apparently unseen in the dead of night.
Police and the Governor emphasize Vermonters should not panic, but be vigliant; report suspicious activity including any stolen boats or other property. “If they’re feeling like cornered animals out there, they are going to do something drastic to try to ensure their physical survival and their continued freedom out of that prison”.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described the situation and the decision to expand the search to nearby Vermont in a news conference. And something I keep hearing people saying is that Matt and Sweat - the two escapees - must be long gone by now.
