New York---Two US killers on the run from jail are probably armed given the surrounding area is so heavily stocked with weapons and ammunition, police said Wednesday on day 19 of a massive manhunt.
Richard Matt, 49, and David Sweat, 35, cut their way out of their cells at the maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility in New York before dawn on June 6 in a spectacular prison break likened to a Hollywood movie.
"Just about every cabin or out building in the north country has one or more shotguns or weapons," Major Charles Guess of New York state police told reporters.
"We have, since day one, operated under the belief that these men are armed. They're extremely dangerous, they're cunning, why wouldn't they try to arm themselves?"
There have been widespread reports that a shotgun is missing from a remote cabin where DNA traces and a bloodied sock indicate they were most likely holed up as late as Saturday morning.
"They put an inordinate amount of weapons and ammunition and other tools in these shared seasonal hunting camps and cabins," Guess said.
Prison worker Joyce Mitchell, charged with facilitating the escape, smuggled the pair hacksaw blades and drill bits, hidden in raw hamburger meat, district attorney Andrew Wylie told local media.
Mitchell stored the meat in a fridge at the tailor shop where she worked, Wylie was quoted as saying.
A corrections officer who has since been placed on administrative leave then delivered it to Matt and Sweat in their cells, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Mitchell's husband told NBC News that his wife enjoyed "attention" and attempted kisses from Matt as their marriage hit a rough patch, but said his wife denied having sex with either inmate.
More than 1,000 US agents are focusing the search on a 75-square mile (194 square kilometer) area within Franklin County.
The terrain is a combination of hills, mountains, ravines, heavy forest, thick undergrowth and dense vegetation, with rivers, streams, ponds and thick bogs complicating the manhunt.
In some areas, visibility was only a few feet or less, and personnel were encountering rain and insect bites, authorities said.
There is a $100,000 reward for information leading to their arrest.
Matt, who dismembered his boss, and Sweat, who killed a sheriff, used power tools to cut through cell walls and crawled through pipes to emerge from a manhole in the village of Dannemora.
AFP
