Details Emerge in Shooting of NY Prison Escapee

A 911 call from a man reporting that a camper he was towing had been shot at led authorities Friday afternoon to Richard Matt, one of the two murderers who escaped from a maximum security prison in upstate New York earlier this month.

Matt was shot and killed by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection tactical team near Lake Titus in the town Malone, about 40 miles west of the Clinton Correctional Facility, the prison from which Matt and David Sweat broke out on June 6.

As darkness fell Friday, an intense manhunt was continuing for Sweat. Earlier reports of a gun battle between police and Sweat were refuted at a press conference Friday night. New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said there have been no sightings of Sweat by law enforcement since the prison escape.

At 1:51 p.m. Friday, a man towing a camper called police to report that he believed the camper had been shot. When police responded to the scene of the gunfire, they came upon a cabin that smelled of gunpowder, D’Amico said.

The border patrol tactical team ”met up with Matt in the woods” at about 3:45 p.m. and told him to put up his hands. ”He was shot when he didn’t comply,” D’Amico said.

Matt was armed with a 20-gauge shotgun at the time, but he did not fire any shots, D’Amico said.

“We have no reason to believe that Mr. Sweat was not with Mr. Matt at the time, but we don’t have any confirming evidence that he was either,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at the press conference in Malone.

Authorities have said all along that they believe the pair are together. Evidence recovered over the past few days, however, at burglarized cabins in the area has so far proved only that Matt had been inside, D’Amico said.

Matt was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the murder of a man he beat and dismembered in December 1997. Sweat, 35, killed a Broome County sheriff’s deputy in July 2002 and was serving a sentence of life without parole.

RELATED:

• Corrections Officer Arrested in Clinton Killers’ Escape
• Prison Worker Helped Upstate Escapees: Police

Matt and Sweat were first discovered missing from their adjoining cells at the prison in Dannemora during a 5:30 a.m. bed check on Saturday, June 6. They executed an elaborate escape plan to penetrate the prison walls and security that included cutting through metal pipes and walls using power tools, Cuomo has said.

They emerged from a manhole on a street outside the prison’s 30-foot walls as the first inmates to break out of Clinton Correctional in its 170-year history. They left behind a taunting yellow sticky note for authorities on a pipe they cut open reading “Have A Nice Day!”

Two prison workers–Joyce Mitchell and Gene Palmer–have been arrested and charged with helping the duo escape.