Police check out new lead on escaped New York prisoners

The search for two killers has landed in New York’s southern tier near the Pennsylvania border, about 565 kilometres from the prison where they escaped two weeks ago.New York State Police spokesman Beau Duffy said officers were investigating a possible sighting of the escaped prisoners near the Pennsylvania border. A person spotted two men on Saturday near a railroad line in the town of Friendship, state police said.

David Sweat and Richard Matt escaped June 6 from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, near the Canadian border. The two broke out of the maximum-security prison using power tools and leaving behind dummies under covers in their adjoining cells.A door-to-door search involving up to 800 law enforcement officers has been underway since then, concentrated in a several-mile radius of woods and fields around the prison.

Sweat, 35, was serving a life sentence without parole for killing a sheriff’s deputy. Matt, 48, was doing 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of his former boss.Prison worker Joyce Mitchell remained in custody yesterday on charges she helped the two men escape by providing them with hacksaw blades, chisels and other tools. She has pleaded not guilty.