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CONSTABLE – David Sweat, who escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, 23 days ago with Richard Matt, was shot by a state trooper in the Town of Constable Sunday afternoon, roughly two miles from the Canadian border.
At about 3:20 p.m., Sgt. Jay Cook, based on a roving patrol in Constable, saw Sweat walking along a road next to a field between Route 30, a main north-south road in the area that leads to Canada, a law enforcement source told The Buffalo News.
The trooper challenged Sweat who tried to run away. Cook opened fire, shooting him twice in the back, the source said.
Sweat was seen bleeding badly, according to the source who called his wounds “life-threatening.”
He was taken to a hospital in Malone and was undergoing surgery as of about 4:30 p.m.
State police said in a statement released just after 5: p.m. that his condition as “unknown” at this time.
CNN showed a photo taken from where Sweat was captured. He appears to be wearing hunting camouflage and a dark coat and there are bug bites and blood spots all over his head. Two people wearing rubber gloves are holding him down.
“We feel so relieved,” said Audra Buchanan, 39, who lives on Coveytown Road, near where Sweat was shot at about 3 p.m. “I’m so happy. My daughter can go outside and play. She’s eight.”
Buchanan was at home watching TV with her daughter when she heard sirens.
State police and border patrols cars raced by, along with a flat bed truck.
At first, she thought it might be an accident.
Then she saw another 20 police cars coming up her road and she ran to lock her doors and windows. She listed on a scanner and heard that Sweat had been shot.
“That’s so scary,” she said when she realized how close she had been to Sweat. “It’s so unnerving that there was a convicted murdered with no regard for life here.”
The area where Sweat was shot in Constable is about 12 miles due north from where Matt was shot dead near Lake Titus by a member of a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team Friday afternoon. It is also about three miles from the Canadian border. Investigators had speculated the pair may have been trying to get to Canada.
More than 1,300 federal, state and local officers had been hunting for Sweat in the dense woods of Franklin County in the northern Adirondack Mountains.
Groups of officers on tactical teams, known as CERT teams, were seen cheering as they emerged from the woods near the shooting scene, the Albany Times-Union reported.
Earlier Sunday, law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said David Sweat’s DNA was found on a pepper shaker in an area about a mile away from where Matt was shot.
But it had been unclear as to whether Sweat was near Matt when the Border Patrol tactical team opened fire on him with a semi-automatic weapon and shot him three times in the head.
The pepper shaker was found in an area where authorities believe Matt and Sweat were resting, the source said.
The pepper wasn’t for seasoning food, the law enforcement source said. Pepper is often used by people on the run trying to throw off K9 units. Ralph “Bucky” Phillips, who escaped from the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden, used the same tactic when he was on the run in 2006.
The new DNA evidence was the best indicator that Sweat could still be in the dense woods of Franklin County, in the northern Adirondack Mountains.
As nearly two days passed since Matt was killed, speculation had grown that Sweat had somehow eluded the hundreds of law officers searching for him.
The last time there was any confirmation of Sweat’s whereabouts came last weekend when DNA tests confirmed both men had been at an Owls Head hunting camp reported burglarized on Saturday. Matt’s DNA turned up at another burglarized cabin in the area Wednesday, but they was no evidence – either forensic or sightings – of Sweat.
That was until the tests on the DNA from the campsite came back Friday.
Also Sunday, autopsy results were released that showed Matt’s three weeks on the run were grueling – and that he met a quick and bloody end.
“Dr. Michael Sikirica determined the cause of death to be severe skull fractures and brain injuries due to gunshot wounds to the head,” a statement from State Police about the autopsy results said.
Matt was shot three times by a Vermont-based U.S. Customs and Border Protection Tactical Unit member who discharged several rounds from a semi-automatic weapon, officials said.
Also, the autopsy, conducted Saturday at Albany Medical Center, revealed that Matt probably spent most of the last three weeks in the outdoors.
He was shot about 40 miles west of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, from which he and Sweat escaped through the pipes June 6.
Bug bites were found on Matt’s lower extremities, along with “blisters and minor abrasions consistent with living in the woods for three weeks,” the statement read.
The Buffalo News reported Sunday that Matt was also ill and drunk when he was shot. A law enforcement source revealed that soiled underwear was found Wednesday in a burglarized cabin. The DNA on the underwear was matched to Matt and indicated he was sick, possibly from drinking bad water or eating spoiled food. The source also said Matt’s body had a strong odor of alcohol. The owner of a cabin that had been burglarized found empty booze bottles.
email: mbecker@buffnews.com