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Prison break: schools closed as manhunt for escaped murderers continues New York schools and highways shut on sixth day of search for escaped prisoners
(about 3 hours later)
Schools in upstate New York closed on Thursday as the search for two escaped murderers entered its sixth day. Authorities closed schools, roads and a stretch of highway in upstate New York on Thursday as hundreds of police searched for two killers who escaped from a maximum security prison six days ago.
A stretch of Route 374, about 30 miles from the Canadian border, was closed late on Wednesday night so that police could pursue a lead in the case. Residents of the rural area were warned to expect an increased police presence in the area. Investigators also continued to question dozens of uniformed and civilian employees of the prison, including a woman who worked in the tailor shop of Clinton Correctional Facility and according to police formed some kind of relationship with the escaped inmates there.
Convicted murderers Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, clambered through pipes and cut steel walls to break out of New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility on Saturday. Police teams led by bloodhounds intensified their search in the fields and forests near the village of Dannemora, which is in the shadow of the prison walls and remains a primary search zone. They also searched homes and questioned locals as a way of “retracing steps made early in the investigation”, state police major Charles Guess said.
Teams also shut down an eight-mile stretch of highway about 30 miles from the Canadian border, and residents of the sparsely populated area were warned to expect an increased police presence.
New York police superintendent Joseph D’Amico said police had received more than 500 leads about the possible location of Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, the convicted murderers who clambered through pipes and cut steel walls to break out of the Clinton Correctional Facility on Saturday night.
Related: New York prison break - how two murderers escaped
But D’Amico conceded that tips had so far not resulted in a substantive clues about where Matt and Sweat have gone. “I have no information on where they are or what they’re doing, I’ll be honest with you,” he told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.
The search also expanded into Vermont, as police there joined forces with their New York counterparts to guard the shores of Lake Champlain and scour the densely wooded border region. Helicopters flew overhead as dogs and men trampled through the sometimes swampy terrain, hunting for any trace of the men through thunderstorms and heavy fog.
On Wednesday dozens of police descended on the town of Willsboro, New York, about 40 miles south of Dannemora and near the lake, based on a tip that two suspicious men had run off a road into the woods in the middle of a rainstorm.
“We have information that suggests that they thought New York was going to be hot,” Vermont governor Peter Shumlin told reporters. He said Matt and Sweat may believe “Vermont would be cooler in terms of law enforcement and that a camp in Vermont might be a better place to be.”
I have no information on where they are or what they’re doing, I’ll be honest with youI have no information on where they are or what they’re doing, I’ll be honest with you
“I have no information on where they are or what they’re doing, I’ll be honest with you,” New York state police superintendent Joseph D’Amico said on Wednesday. More than 450 state and federal investigators, including officers from the FBI, park rangers, local police and marine units, are looking for Matt and Sweat in upstate New York and western Vermont. Customs and border officials in both the US and Canada have said they are in a state of “heightened alert”.
More than 500 tips have poured in and about 450 local, state and federal law enforcement agents are assisting with the search. D’Amico acknowledged that one civilian employee, a 51-year-old woman, had been singled out by investigators for what role she might have played in the convicts’ escape. He declined to go into details, but said she “was befriended [by] or befriended the inmates, and may have had some sort of role in assisting them”.
Vermont governor Peter Shumlin said on Wednesday that the inmates could be making their way to his state and that Vermont police have been put on alert as the manhunt continues. They are also coordinating search efforts with police in New York. On the night of the escape, the woman sought treatment from nearby Alice Hyde Medical Center, a spokesperson for the hospital confirmed. Her son said that she had suffered from a nervous attack that night, but defended her from speculation that she may have abetted the murderers.
But the search seemed focused on a perimeter in upstate New York overnight. Helicopters flew over the area, which was closed off with road blocks. Reporters stationed at the site reported rainfall and lighting. Matt was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of a former employer, after having spent a decade in a Mexican prison for a separate murder conviction there. Sweat was serving a life sentence without parole for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy.
In the fog is the zone police havebeen combing for hours. It's an eerie sight this morning. pic.twitter.com/trTlldwdw9 Both men resided on the “honor block” of Clinton Correctional, where their record of good behavior in prison was rewarded with extra liberties, such as the right to wear clothing other than their inmate scrubs and the opportunity to work in “shops” as tailors, plumbers or other kinds of workmen.
Local school district Saranac Central closed schools on Thursday because of the search. One of the central mysteries of the convicts’ elaborate, Hollywood-style escape is the provenance of the power tools they used to drill, saw and smash their way through the prison’s bowels and out into the street above. Matt and Sweat may have filched tools and power cords from civilian contractors working on renovating the 170-year-old prison, for instance, or have had someone smuggle them in.
New York state police said that the inmates may have received help from a prison worker, though investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the pair were acting on their own. Investigators have refused to officially endorse any definitive story about how Matt and Sweat escaped, but unnamed law enforcement sources have told local media that the men acquired the civilian employee’s cellphone and that she may have panicked and failed to carry out a plan to act as getaway driver on the night of escape.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of both men, who police have described as “a danger to the public”. “Everybody has a theory,” James Calnon, the mayor of nearby Plattsburgh, told CNN on Thursday. “We’re not rejecting any theory at this point.”
Similarly, police spokesman Beau Duffy told the Guardian that officers still welcome all tips: “We’re chasing them all down.”
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of both men, and described the men as “desperate” and “dangerous”.
Prison escapes remain a rarity in the United States, despite an inmate population that surpasses 1.5 million people. Most are relatively mundane “walk-offs” from parole or work programs, and among the few spectacular escapes from high-security prisons, most convicts are captured shortly thereafter.