New York prison escapee shot by police

MALONE, N.Y. — One of two convicted murderers who staged a brazen escape from an upstate maximum-security prison three weeks ago was shot and killed Friday in a gunbattle with law enforcement officers in a wooded area about 30 miles from the prison, and the other is on the run.

Schumer said searchers closed in on the pair after receiving a 911 call from a woman who heard someone knock on her door early Friday in Malone, which is about 30 miles west of the Clinton Correctional Facility.

State Police Maj. Charles Guess said earlier Friday that the search area had shifted slightly northwest to Malone after investigators found evidence left behind by the escapees.

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.

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