The Latest on prison escape: DA says worker gave contraband

The Associated Press
Posted 12/6/15

9:20 a.m. (EDT)A prosecutor says a prison employee provided contraband to the two murderers who cut their way out of a maximum-security prison in northern New York last weekend.Clinton County …

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The Latest on prison escape: DA says worker gave contraband

Posted
9:20 a.m. (EDT)A prosecutor says a prison employee provided contraband to the two murderers who cut their way out of a maximum-security prison in northern New York last weekend.Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie said Friday morning that Joyce Mitchell gave David Sweat and Richard Matt illegal items. Wylie says he won't provide details about the contraband, but he said it wasn't the power tools the convicts used to make their escape last weekend from their neighboring cells at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.Mitchell hasn't been charged.Mitchell was a supervisor in the prison tailor shop, where Sweat and Matt worked. A person close to the case told The Associated Press that investigators believe she had agreed to be the getaway driver, but she never showed up. The person was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.— Associated Press writer Michael Virtanen contributed to this report.___7:20 a.m. (EDT)Squads of law enforcement officers are heading out for a seventh day of searching for two murderers who escaped from a maximum-security prison in northern New York.Armed officers in body armor started boarding New York state prison system buses soon after dawn Friday in the village of Dannemora, where David Sweat and Richard Matt used power tools to cut their way out of their neighboring cells last weekend. They remain at large.The hundreds of state, federal and local officers conducting the search spent Thursday slogging through a swampy patch of woods just east of Dannemora after investigators had received tips that the convicts were in the area. Tracking dogs had picked up the scent in the morning.State Route 374, the main road leading into Dannemora, remains closed for a second day, as does the local school district.___6:45 a.m. (EDT)The rugged northern New York terrain being searched for two escaped murderers presents major challenges to anyone who ventures into the Adirondack woods.Experts say if escapees David Sweat and Richard Matt are in the wooded, swampy area just east of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, they're enduring two of the region's warm-weather nuisances: swarms of biting insects.Curt Stager, a biology professor at Paul Smith's College in the Adirondacks, tells the Press-Republican of Plattsburgh (https://bitly.com/shorten) that black flies come out during the day while mosquitoes are just as prevalent at night.The hundreds of law enforcement officers attempting to catch the escapees are encountering the same conditions as they slog through streams and swamps in the search area, located near the Adirondack Park's northeastern boundary about 20 miles south of the Canadian border.

This file photo provided by New York State Governor's office shows the area where two convicted murderers used power tools to cut through steel pipes at the Clinton Correctional facility in Dannemora, N.Y. A licensed engineer who has done work at the Clinton Correctional facility where two killers escaped last weekend said the work of cutting through a cell wall and a steam pipe was done with a high degree of professionalism. Larry Jeffords, owner of Jeffords Steel and Engineering in upstate New York, told The Associated Press that convicts David Sweat, 34, and Richard Matt, 48, were either very proficient with the tools they used _ or they had help. (Darren McGee/New York State Governor's Office, via AP, File)


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