BELLMONT, N.Y. (AP) - A correction officer at an upstate New York maximum-security prison has become the second worker there arrested in connection with the escapes of two inmates.
State police say Gene Palmer faces charges including promoting prison contraband and tampering with physical evidence. He was to be arraigned Wednesday night in Plattsburgh. A call to his attorney seeking comment wasn't answered.
Inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt were reported missing from the Clinton County Correctional Facility in Dannemora on June 6.
Authorities say they cut through the steel wall at the back of their cells, crawled down a catwalk, broke through a brick wall, cut their way into and out of a steam pipe and then sliced through the chain and lock on a manhole cover outside the prison.
Prison employee Joyce Mitchell has been charged with helping them escape. She has pleaded not guilty.
Searchers hunting for the escaped killers Wednesday were contending with steep slopes, thick woods, sticky bogs, biting bugs and the possibility that the pair on the lam from prison for 19 days is armed.
Police said they remain almost 100 percent certain Sweat and Matt spent time recently at a hunting camp about 20 miles west of the correctional facility near Owls Head. A hunter said he saw a figure bolting from the cabin on Saturday morning. But after days of intense searching with dogs and helicopters, police still had no substantiated sightings of Sweat and Matt.