Second NY prison escapee shot, captured
June 29, 2015
A convicted murderer who broke out of a maximum-security prison in the US state of New York three weeks ago has been shot and captured, authorities said Sunday.
David Sweat, 35, was apprehended only two miles (three kilometers) south of the Canadian border, local media reported, citing law enforcement sources. Just two days ago, his accomplice Richard Matt, 49, was shot and killed by authorities.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) confirmed Sweat had been captured on Twitter.
"At approximately 3:20 p.m. on June 28, a member of the New York State Police spotted a suspicious man walking down a roadway in the town of Constable," police said Sunday in a statement.
"The State Police member shot and injured Clinton Correctional Facility escapee David Sweat. Sweat was taken into police custody alive, then taken to a local hospital for treatment of his injuries."
The details of Sweat's condition remain unclear.
Sweat's capture is the end of a weeks-long manhunt involving hundreds of law enforcement personnel that began after Sweat and Matt staged a spectacular prison break in the upstate New York town of Dannemora on June 6.
The two inmates used power tools to cut through cell walls and then crawled through pipes to emerge from a nearby manhole.
Two prison workers have been charged with aiding the escapees, accused of smuggling the tools and other equipment to the inmates.
The resulting manhunt involved nearly 1,300 personnel, as well as helicopters and tracking dogs. The escape was the first in history from the maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility.
Sweat was serving a life sentence in the facility for murdering a sheriff's deputy in 2002.
Matt was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnapping and murder of his former boss. He fled to Mexico following that murder, and killed another American there before being sentenced to 20 years in prison and extradited back to the US.
bw/bk (AFP, AP, Reuters)