Hundreds of heavily armed police officers in a remote part of New York state focused their hunt for a prison escapee on a heavily wooded area near the Clinton Correctional Facility.

Officials said convicted killer David Sweat may have a tougher time eluding authorities now that he is alone.

His fellow escapee, Richard Matt, was shot and killed by police Friday.

The two men staged a spectacular escape from the prison more than three weeks ago.

Clinton County Sheriff David Favro said there is no evidence to suggest the two had split up before Friday’s shooting, so searchers are concentrating their search near the spot where Matt was killed.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Matt, a convicted killer, was shot to death by police after a citizen complained about hearing a gunshot.

Massive manhunt

Matt and Sweat have been the target of a massive manhunt in the area around Clinton, a town in upstate New York near the Canadian border.

More than 1,000 police and federal agents have been trying to find the two men.

The prisoners escaped with the help of tools hidden in packages of frozen hamburger meat that they received. Once out of their cells, they traveled through a maze of internal passages and catwalks built for prison maintenance work and eventually emerged from a sewer outside the maximum-security compound.

Two prison employees have been arrested for helping Matt and Sweat escape.

Gene Palmer and Joyce Mitchell are accused of helping to smuggle the tools, including hacksaw blades and bits for power drills, to the pair.

Matt, 49, was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for kidnapping and dismembering his former boss in 1997.

Sweat, 35, was serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for murdering a sheriff’s deputy in 2002.

New York state had offered a reward of $100,000 for their capture, or half that amount for information leading to the return of one of the men.
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