Officers use floodlights, checkpoints in hunt for escapee

MALONE, N.Y. (AP) — Officers scouring dense and boggy woods for a surviving escaped killer took floodlights into the search area overnight, and others carrying rifles manned checkpoints and examined vehicles, opening trunks and peering into windows.

Richard Matt — who once vowed never to be taken alive — was fatally shot Friday during an encounter with border patrol agents about 30 miles west of the prison he escaped from with Sweat on June 6.

Local residents were relieved that one killer was no longer roaming the woods, but the constant commotion of speeding police cruisers and helicopters pointed to the continued danger.

Sweat, 35, was serving a sentence of life without parole in the killing of a sheriff's deputy in Broome County in 2002.

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 prison.