Police swooped on an area in southern New York state a few miles from the border with Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, in the hope that they were closing in on two convicted murderers who escaped from an upstate prison two weeks ago.
Heavily armed police officers, helicopters, dog teams and state troopers driving all-terrain vehicles swarmed to a rural area near the small town of Friendship, Allegany County, New York, at around 5pm.
Earlier, reports said the two fugitives who escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility maximum security prison wing in Dannemora, 350 miles north-east of Friendship, had been spotted in the area.
Officers were ordered to keep radio silence and media personnel were asked to move out of a new perimeter area set up with road blocks and police patrols around an area centering on railway tracks near the town.
The police warned local citizens not to approach anyone they thought might be the two men.
Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 35, have been on the run since drilling their way out of prison through walls and pipes on 6 June.
A massive manhunt failed to find them despite grid searches of dense forests and vacant buildings and cabins in the countryside in the Dannemora region by up to 800 investigators and rangers.
As the hunt began to be scaled back locally in recent days and officials admitted they had no idea where the two were, reports emerged on Friday night that two men resembling the inmates had been seen a few miles from the Pennsylvania border.
Authorities declared it a “credible report” and began massing in the area near Friendship, searching culverts, roads and railway tracks.
Matt and Sweat broke out of Clinton prison in the early hours of Saturday June 6 and emerged through a manhole cover into a street in Dannemora, from where they fled.
They had expected a prison worker, Joyce Mitchell, to arrange their getaway but she had panicked and did not turn up, leaving the inmates to fend for themselves.
Mitchell, 51, was questioned and then arrested on 12 June and charged in connection with smuggling tools to the inmates and assisting their breakout.
New York state police and the US Marshall Service have collectively put up $150,000 in rewards for information leading to the men’s capture.
The search near Friendship was taking place on the eve of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, which would assist the authorities with extra daylight. Coudy, damp weather was not helping, however.
As darkness fell, foot patrols in the woods were unlikely to continue. But police helicopters with infra-red cameras would be able continue to search for movement at night.
