Residents on edge as search for 2 killers goes on

Associated Press

DANNEMORA, N.Y.

Residents in rural New York, unaccustomed to locking their doors, day or night, were on edge Saturday as the massive manhunt for two killers stretched over an eighth day and the two men remained undetected after cutting themselves out of a maximum-security prison with power tools.

More than 800 law-enforcement officers in the hunt for David Sweat and Richard Matt scoured the fields and Adirondack woods several miles around the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora near the Canadian border.

Their search resumed the morning after a prison worker was charged with smuggling in hacksaw blades, chisels, a punch and a screwdriver bit to help the men escape. The woman appeared in handcuffs before a judge in Plattsburgh on Friday night, and her lawyer entered a not-guilty plea on her behalf.

With several hundred tips to check out, police said they had no new leads by the end of the day Saturday. Their heavily armed presence in the rural landscape has become both reassuring and unsettling to local residents.

“I just mowed some fields and I kept looking over my shoulder. It’s scary,” said Jason Hamel, who lives with his wife and three young daughters in West Chazy, five minutes from one of the many roadblocks set up in the manhunt. “I won’t let the kids outside.

“My wife and I love to be outdoors,” he added. “We haven’t done any of that, and when we do go outside now, we’re armed.”

Shortly before 5 p.m., about 30 officers emerged from a wooded area along Route 3 a few miles south of the prison and more officers were lined up on the shoulder waiting to be picked up for a break before returning to search.

Mitchell was ordered held in jail on $100,000 cash bail or $200,000 bond. She was moved to a jail in another county Saturday morning at the request of the Clinton County sheriff and is due back in court Monday.

Mitchell is accused of befriending the 34-year-old Sweat and 48-year-old Matt and giving them the contraband, according to criminal complaints.