Skip to footer

Bickering complicated life on the lam for escaped prisoners

In addition to dodging hundreds of searchers, escaped prisoners David Sweat and Richard Matt also struggled with interpersonal challenges.

|
New York State Police/AP/File
Mug shots released by the New York State Police show David Sweat (l.) and Richard Matt. Matt, who staged a brazen escape from an upstate maximum-security prison with Sweat and had been hunted for three weeks was shot and killed June 26. Sweat was shot and captured on June 28.

Life on the lam proved to be quite stressful for two prisoners on the run from New York's maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility. In addition to dodging hundreds of searchers, escaped prisoners David Sweat and Richard Matt also struggled with interpersonal challenges, according to a new report from The Press-Republican of Plattsburgh.

Commander Major Charles Guess, who led the search for Mr. Matt and Mr. Sweat, told the Plattsburgh paper that the fugitives had a disagreement about when to leave the hunting cabin located 15 Miles from prison in Twisted Horn camp in remote Owls Head.

After spending two to three nights at the cabin, Sweat grew concerned. "It was a Saturday, and it was a beautiful day,” related Commander Guess, referring to June 20. “And he thought that someone could be coming to check on the camp, and he wanted to get out of there."

Having access to alcohol, heat, and water, Matt was comfortable and wanted to stay. He said that if someone showed up, they could either take him hostage or kill him, Sweat told police after his capture.

But they rushed off the back deck into the woods on June 20 when John Stockwell, a corrections officer, approached the cabin. Officer Stockwell was checking the cameras at the hunting camp.

The prisoners escaped from the maximum security prison in upstate NY on June 6. Sweat told authorities that he had spent months digging his way out of the prison while guards slept at night. The search for them stretched from Pennsylvania to the Canadian border, while there were also some speculations that Matt and Sweat might be in Mexico or somewhere far away. But when Stockwell called 911, the police shifted their focus to the Mountain View and Owls Head area in the town of Bellmont.

After leaving the cabin, Sweat found Matt to be a liability and finally they went their separate ways.

In the end, Matt was shot three times in the head and killed by law enforcement officers on June 26 and two days later Sweat was shot and captured close to the Canadian border.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Bickering complicated life on the lam for escaped prisoners
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0723/Bickering-complicated-life-on-the-lam-for-escaped-prisoners
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe