Escaped prisoner David Sweat taken down by lone officer, say officials

June 28, 2015 by STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS / lidesk@newsday.com

The second of two convicted murderers who staged a brazen escape three weeks ago from a maximum-security prison in northern New York was shot and captured near the Canadian border Sunday, two days after his fellow inmate was killed in a confrontation with law enforcement, authorities said.

"The nightmare is finally over," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared at a news conference.

"These were really dangerous, dangerous men," said the governor. "We could not tolerate them being on the loose."

While an array of federal and state law enforcement officers had been tracking Sweat, in the end it was a lone state police sergeant on routine patrol who took him down.

State police Sgt. Jay Cook shot the prisoner, David Sweat, in the town of Constable, about 2 miles south of the Canadian border and 30 miles northwest of the prison, after spotting him walking along a road and recognizing him. Sweat fled and Cook pursued him, opening fire when he couldn't catch him on foot and saw the fugitive getting away, authorities said. The capture came 16 miles north of where the other escaped prisoner was shot and killed.

Cuomo said Cook, the father of two daughters, was alone at the time. He called him a hero.

Sweat, who was unarmed, was struck twice in the torso and taken to a hospital in stable condition, Cuomo said. State Police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico said Sweat would be moved later to a trauma center,

D'Amico said Cook fired "because he thought he [Sweat] was going to make it to the tree line."

He called the trooper's actions a "very courageous act of policing," adding "if Sweat had made it to the tree line, who knows what kind of damage" he could have done.

Cuomo said of the capture: "If it had to happen, this is the way you want it to end."

D'Amico said searchers -- who included state police, U.S. marshals, the FBI and several local police departments -- had been closing in on Sweat in the upstate area where he was shot, about a mile and half from the Canadian border.

"We can only assume he was going for the border," D'Amico said.

D'Amico said DNA found on a pepper shaker at the scene of a recent burglary in the area was linked back to Sweat, so police knew he was in the area. He said the pepper had probably been used to throw off the dogs tracking his scent.

"It was effective" said D'Amico, who said the dogs had in fact lost his scent.

CNN broadcast a photo it said was of Sweat immediately after the shooting, his hands behind his back, with blood smeared on his face and soaking his dark clothing. Fellow escaped inmate Richard Matt was armed when he was killed Friday afternoon during an encounter with border patrol agents after failing to respond to an order to raise his hands.

Matt and Sweat used power tools to saw through a steel cell wall and several steel steam pipes; bashed a hole through a 2-foot-thick brick wall; squirmed through pipes; and emerged from a manhole outside the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora on June 6.

"If you were writing a movie plot, you would say this is overdone," said Cuomo.

Sweat was serving a sentence of life without parole in the killing of a sheriff's deputy in Broome County in 2002. Matt was serving 25 years to life for killing and dismembering his former boss. They were added to the U.S. Marshals Service's 15 most wanted fugitives list two weeks after getting away.

The search for the escaped killers was initially concentrated around the prison and a rural community where search dogs had earlier caught the scent of both men.

"It's a little unnerving, him being so close," Constable resident Trevor Buchanan said Sunday. "I'm just glad it's over."

In nearby Malone, Cathy Leffler cheered outside Alice Hyde Medical Center as an ambulance transporting Sweat left the hospital escorted by police vehicles. Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for Albany Medical Center, said Sweat was being transferred there for further treatment.

"I feel like I can sleep tonight," Leffler said. "Life can go back to normal. It's over now."

She said she had to come to the hospital to "see it through."

"This has been going on for three weeks and our town was in an uproar and we haven't been able to sleep. This is a relief for the town of Malone."

The manhunt broke open Friday afternoon when a person towing a camper heard a loud noise and thought a tire had blown. Finding there was no flat, the driver drove 8 miles before looking again and finding a bullet hole in the trailer. A tactical team responding to the scene of the shot smelled gunpowder inside a cabin and saw evidence that someone had fled out the back door.

A noise -- perhaps a cough -- ultimately did Matt in. A border patrol team discovered Matt, who was shot after failing to heed a command to raise his hands. He was shot three times in the head, according to an autopsy.

A coroner who attended the autopsy said Matt was clean, well-fed and dressed for the elements at the time he was killed.

Two prison workers have been charged in connection with the inmates' escape.

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