A massive manhunt is underway for two men who escaped from prison this weekend under circumstances better suited to an action movie than Upstate New York. Richard Matt and David Sweat, both convicted murderers, used power tools they smuggled into their cells to cut holes in walls and pipes, and made dummies from sweatshirts to fool guards while they made their way out of Clinton Correctional Facility, the Associated Press reports.
Even with a $100,000 reward for information and ongoing search efforts by police and the FBI, the two men "could literally be anywhere," one state police officer told CNN. It's still unclear whether Matt and Sweat managed to get ahold of a car, or if they had help, but a report from The New York Post says a female prison worker is being questioned.
According to the AP, the men weren't content to just leave quietly. They left a note that said, "Have a nice day" and included a racist caricature on a pipe they escaped through.
Prison breaks, especially the kind involving secret tunnels, call to mind The Shawshank Redemption, but neither perpetrator of this escape is a sympathetic-sounding character. Sweat was serving a life sentence for killing a sherriff's deputy in 2002, and Matt was convicted of killing and dismembering a businessman in 1997. He fled to Mexico and was extradited back to the U.S. after murdering another person outside a bar.
Because the prison the two men escaped from is so close to the Canadian border (it's located about a 45-minute drive from Montreal), there is a chance that they have already left the country. Speaking of the search efforts in a press conference, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, "This is a crisis situation for the state." He added, "These are dangerous men capable of committing grave crimes again."
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