As search for fugitives shifts, town’s nerves fray
Escaped killers reportedly seen in southern N.Y.
The leaden gray sky turned black over southwestern New York but the town of Friendship, N.Y., could not go to sleep.
The collective anxiety that for two weeks had gripped the northeast corner of the state suddenly swung to its southern border Saturday — the product of what the police called a “signi(icant sighting” in Allegany County of the two convicted murderers who escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y.
Residents near the possible sighting in Friendship talked of locking their doors, canceling soccer games and even readying their guns as they braced for the two inmates to surface. Some 150 law enforcement of(icers held a perimeter in the area overnight with the help of roadblocks, said William Duffy, a State Police spokesman.
And yet as Sunday morning dawned, State Police troopers were shifting their blockades once again and the killers remained elusive.
It was a discouraging turn for investigators who on Saturday appeared closer to (inding the inmates, David Sweat and Richard Matt, than they had been since the men broke out of the maximum-security prison with the help of makeshift dummies, power tools and a steam pipe. A New York State Departm ent ofCorrections officer walks out ofthe woods as officers search an area ofsouthern New York for two fugitives.
Residents in Friendship spoke of being pulled through the same cycle of fear, anticipation and fatigue that New Yorkers in the opposite corner of the state had come to know.
Anne Frank, 35, who owns a restaurant in downtown Belmont, N.Y., just east of Friendship, said she received an automated police call around 4:30 p.m. Saturday “telling me that my address was located near a wooded area and that convicted felons were on the loose.”
Several hours earlier, law enforcement of(icials said, a woman driving in the area saw two men emerge from the woods who (it the description of Sweat and Matt, who were discovered missing from the prison early on June 6. Investigators believed her report was credible.
The call noti(ied Frank that the missing inmates could be near a “big hill” in the area. Soon one of her cooks who lives in Friendship called to say he could not get around the police blockades.
“He was locked inside of his house and couldn’t get into work,” Frank said.
Shadows along roadways and lights flickering in farm (ields prompted frightened calls to emergency dispatchers. Those, in turn, fed the rumor mill in a town of 2,000.
“It’s a very quiet, very small community,” said James Blouvet, the Friendship town supervisor. “Not very much happens here.”