Canadian Police on Lookout for New York Fugitives
Canadian federal police said Wednesday they are on the lookout for two escaped prisoners from New York state after receiving several tips they may have crossed the border into Canada.
Richard Matt, 49, and David Sweat, 35, escaped almost two weeks ago from a maximum security jail in New York state, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the U.S.-Canada border.
"We received information that we're trying to collaborate that the pair entered Canada," Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Francois Gagnon told AFP.
He added that the RCMP is "working with several American partners, including the FBI," on the case.
The daily Journal de Montreal reported that police believe the fugitives may have crossed the border from the town of Jackman in the U.S. state of Maine into Canada's Quebec province.
The region is heavily wooded and mountainous.
Matt, six feet (1.83 meters) tall with multiple tattoos, was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnapping and dismembering of his former boss in a 27-hour ordeal.
He fled to Mexico after the murder and killed another American there, before being sentenced to 20 years and extradited back to New York.
Sweat was serving a life sentence without parole for murdering a sheriff's deputy in New York state in 2002 when he was 22.
A woman who worked at a tailoring shop at the Clinton Correctional Facility has confessed to giving them hacksaw blades and other contraband used in the June 6 maximum security prison break.
Despite an exhaustive search by some 800 officers in the United States chasing more than 1,000 leads, there have been no confirmed sightings of the pair.
Source: Agence France Presse
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