Captured! 2nd NY Prison Escapee Shot and Arrested

28 Jun, 2015

The second of two convicted murderers who staged a brazen escape three weeks ago from a maximum-security prison in northern New York was shot and captured near the Canadian border on Sunday, two days after his fellow inmate was killed in a confrontation with law enforcement, state police said.

A trooper shot David Sweat in the town of Constable, about 2 miles south of the Canadian border and 30 miles from the prison, after spotting a suspicious person walking down a road Sunday afternoon, state police said. Sweat was taken into police custody and transported to a hospital for treatment of his injuries, they said. His condition was not immediately known.

State police did not immediately say why the trooper fired at Sweat or whether he was armed. Fellow inmate Richard Matt was killed Friday afternoon during an encounter with border patrol agents when he failed to respond to an order to raise his hands.

According to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., federal law enforcement said Sweat was shot twice and coughing up blood as he was taken to a hospital. He said no officers were believed to be injured.

Matt and Sweat used power tools to saw through a steel cell wall and several steel steam pipes, bashed a hole through a 2-foot-thick brick wall, squirmed through pipes and emerged from a manhole outside the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora on June 6.

Sweat was serving a sentence of life without parole in the killing of a sheriff’s deputy in Broome County in 2002. Matt was serving 25 years to life for the killing and dismembering of his former boss. They were added to the U.S. Marshals Service’s 15 Most Wanted fugitives list two weeks after getting away.

AP

Image WNYT twitter

Mentioned In This Post: