New York Escaped Prisoner David Sweat Shot, Captured After 'Nightmare' Manhunt

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New York prisoner, David Sweat who escaped with Richard Matt, has been shot
and captured more than three weeks after escaped from a maximum security prison in upstate New York.

Sweat is hospitalized in critical condition after he was caught in the area of Constable, New York, approximately 1.5 miles south of the Canadian border, officials said. Authorities believe Sweat was trying to make a final break toward the border.

At about 3:20 p.m. on Sunday, State Police Sgt. Jay Cook was alone on a routine patrol when he spotted Sweat on a road near Route 30 and ordered him to stop, a source familiar with the investigation said. When Sweat started to run, the sergeant opened fire, the source said.

Officials said Sweat was shot twice in the torso. Sweat was not armed, New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico said.

Sweat was in critical condition at Albany Medical Center, an official there said Sunday evening, after being transferred from Alice Hyde Medical Center in Malone, New York.


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No law enforcement personnel were injured during the capture, an official briefed on the manhunt said.

The man who escaped with Sweat, Richard Matt, was shot and killed by a border patrol SWAT team Friday afternoon in Elephant's Head, New York, just 50 miles away from the prison, after he was spotted by a law enforcement officer in the woods.

Matt and Sweat may have been using picnic-style pepper shakers to throw their scent off the dogs tracking them, D'Amico said today.

Authorities had found Sweat's DNA on remnants of food about a mile from where Matt was shot and killed.

On Friday afternoon before Matt was killed, officials announced they had reason to believe Sweat and Matt were planning to head to the border in a final play for freedom. As a result, U.S. and Canadian law enforcement sent in reinforcements in an effort to both squeeze the escapees and keep them from potentially making it out of the country.

"If you were writing a movie plot, they would say this was overdone," he said. "They were killers," Cuomo said. "Mr. Matt killed at least two people. Mr. Sweat killed a sheriff's deputy ... in a savage, savage way."

Matt was serving 25 years to life in prison after he kidnapped and beat a man to death in 1997. Sweat was serving a life sentence after he was convicted of killing a Broome County sheriff's deputy in 2002.