Thread: Canadian police look out for US fugitives

Canadian police look out for US fugitives

June 18, 2015 - 5:16AM

This combination of photos released by the New York State Police shows progression images of what convicted murderers Richard Matt(left) and David Sweat might look like after being on the run for ten days. Photo: AFP

Montreal: Canadian federal police say they are on the lookout for two escaped prisoners from New York state after receiving several tips they may have crossed the border into Canada.

Richard Matt, 49, and David Sweat, 35, escaped almost two weeks ago from a maximum security jail in New York state, 40km south of the US-Canada border.

"We received information that we're trying to collaborate that the pair entered Canada," Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Corporal Francois Gagnon said on Wednesday.

A task force of US Marshalls and police officers go door to door searching for two escaped convicts outside Dannemora, New York. Photo: Getty Images

He added that the RCMP is "working with several American partners, including the FBI," on the case.

The daily Journal de Montreal reported that police believe the fugitives may have crossed the border from the town of Jackman in the US state of Maine into Canada's Quebec province.

The region is heavily wooded and mountainous.

Helped inmates escape prison ... Joyce Mitchell appears before Judge Buck Rogers in Plattsburgh City Court, New York. Photo: POOL

Matt was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnapping and dismembering of his former boss in a 27-hour ordeal.

He fled to Mexico after the murder and killed another American there, before being sentenced to 20 years and extradited back to New York.

Sweat was serving a life sentence without parole for murdering a sheriff's deputy in New York state in 2002 when he was 22.

Correction officers check out a flatbed truck at a road block looking for escaped convicts Richard Matt and David Sweat in Dannemora, New York. Photo: AP

Joyce Mitchell, who worked at a tailoring shop at the Clinton Correctional Facility, has confessed to giving them hacksaw blades and other contraband used in the June 6 maximum security prison break.

Despite an exhaustive search by some 800 officers in the United States chasing more than 1000 leads, there have been no confirmed sightings of the pair.

The two convicted murderers could be nearby or "in Mexico by now," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says.

The intense man hunt focused on the fields and Adirondack woods near the prison in upstate New York after the inmates' escape was apparently hampered by a prison employee's decision to back out as their getaway driver nine days ago.

The inmates, David Sweat and Richard Matt, planned to have the now-jailed prison worker drive them about seven hours away to an unknown destination, District Attorney Andrew Wylie told CNN.

But prison tailor shop instructor Joyce Mitchell backed out of the plan at the last minute, Wylie said.

"One of the reasons that she didn't show up was because she did love her husband and didn't want to do this to him," he said.

Even as hundreds of law enforcement workers stalked the rural area about 30 kilometres from Canada, Cuomo said it was unclear if the men were still nearby.

"We don't know if they are still in the area or if they're in Mexico by now," Cuomo said.

Roads on the western edge of Plattsburgh were open only to local traffic and a state police helicopter was parked in a field where 24 hours earlier a contingent of 40 officers had marched into the adjacent woods on yet another grid search.

Many local residents were very much on edge, with some saying they were keeping firearms handy just in case.

Both men are considered extremely dangerous.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/canadian...17-ghqqxs.html

The RCMP will root those guys out if the are up there. Sgt. Preston and King, no, no, no, those 2 were active 65 years ago. LOL

Moved to Other Topics - not about immigration.

Originally Posted by Newmexican

Moved to Other Topics - not about immigration.

It's about Americans going illegally to Canada.