Dannemora 
 
 A violent melee between two factions of inmates broke out in a recreation yard at Clinton Correction Facility five days before two inmates on an "honor block" used tools to cut their way out of the maximum security prison. 
 
 The fight took place June 1 when two groups of inmates — some of whom were Muslim and others who were suspected members of the Bloods gang — began fighting, according to a person briefed on the case. 
 
 Correction officers in two towers overlooking the yard fired canisters of chemical agents into the middle of the fight, which ended in less than a minute, the person said. An inmate suffered a broken leg. Part of the prison was locked down the next day, four days before the escape, but only the yard and two cellblocks were searched, rather than the entire prison, which houses about 3,000 inmates. Five weapons were found during the searches. 
 
 A person close to the case said some correction officers are questioning whether a request to lock down and search the entire facility was rebuffed by Department of Corrections and Community Supervision headquarters in Albany. 
 
 A spokesperson for DOCCS on Tuesday said no information about the operations at the prison is being released while the investigation into the escape, and the search for the escaped inmates, continues. 
 
 The two inmates, Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, used a small electrical saw, powered by extension cords, and a sledgehammer to cut and pound their way to freedom from inside the prison not far from the Canadian border. 
 
 A law enforcement source briefed on the case said State Police investigators are probing whether the inmates may have received the small hand-held saw and other tools from a female civilian employee who had developed a relationship with Matt. The items would have been smuggled into the prison. 
 
 Employees at state prisons are not required to pass through metal detectors when they enter the facilities, although bags and purses are supposed to be searched. There is a size limit on the bags that employees carry into the facilities, but it is rarely enforced, according to an official with the state DOCCS. 
 
 Matt and Sweat used the saw and hand-held blades to cut holes through metal walls in the back of their adjacent cells on an "honor block" tier. The holes they cut led to a cavernous utility bowel inside the prison where the men spliced an electrical cord into a light fixture to power the saw they then used to cut a large hole in a 24-inch steam pipe that led to a sewer outside the prison, said the source, who is not authorized to comment publicly on the case. They cut their way into the pipe because climbing through it was the only way to get past the outer prison wall, the source said. 
 
 As a massive manhunt continues in the heavily forested areas around the prison in Dannemora, the investigation has zeroed in on a female employee who worked for several years in a prison tailor shop with Matt and Sweat. Published reports said investigators have visited the woman's home. A person close to the case said investigators are also examining whether the employee or someone else may have given Matt access to a cellphone. Correction officers briefed on the case said police believe the escapees had arranged with someone to pick them up a block from the prison, but that their alleged accomplice backed out. 
 
 When they climbed out of a sewer hole near the prison around midnight Friday, they were on foot and the initial search focused on a tight radius in the area of the prison. 
 
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 Prison employees, including correction officers, support staff and administrators, are prohibited from having personal relationships with inmates. 
 
 The manhole covers are locked from the inside to prevent them from being stolen. But the person briefed on the case said the inmates apparently used a 20-pound sledgehammer to break the cover's lock. It's unclear how they obtained the sledgehammer. The men carried their tools into the bowels of the prison in a guitar case that they kept in one of their cells. Two witnesses reported seeing two men in the back yard of a house just after midnight Friday, including one who was carrying a guitar case. The men were discovered missing from their cells at 5:30 a.m. Saturday. 
 
 Being on an honor block gave the inmates more liberties, including the ability to cook and visit other inmates' cells at times. 
 
 The looser restrictions on the honor block tier may have been a factor in their meticulous escape plan. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who visited the prison Saturday, questioned how other inmates on the tier could not have heard the sawing, suggesting sarcastically they must be "heavy sleepers." 
 
 Matt and Sweat, both of whom were convicted of murder, had piled clothing and other items under their bed linens to make it appear they were sleeping, state officials said. 
 
 The FBI is assisting in the search, and a law enforcement source said authorities believe the men, with their escape plan altered, could still be within a five- or 10-mile radius of the prison. The inmates' assignment on the honor block allowed them to wear and keep regular clothing other than their prison uniforms. The person briefed on the case said the green prison uniforms were found left behind. 
 
 blyons@timesunion.com • 518-454-5547 • @blyonswriter ||||| (CNN) Investigators think a woman who worked with Richard Matt and David Sweat at the Clinton Correctional Facility planned to pick the convicted killers up after they escaped but changed her mind at the last minute, a source familiar with the investigation tells CNN. 
 
 Joyce Mitchell went to a hospital this weekend because of panic attacks, the source said. 
 
 Mitchell is one of several prison employees who has been questioned in the case. She has given a statement and is being "somewhat cooperative," a source said. She has not been charged. 
 
 Her cell phone was used to call several people connected to Matt, another source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. It's unclear who made the calls or when the calls were made. Authorities are trying to determine whether Mitchell was aware her phone was being used. 
 
 Her son, Tobey Mitchell, has come to her defense. 
 
 He told NBC that she wouldn't "risk her life or other people's lives to help these guys escape." He said his mother was in a hospital with severe chest pains about the time of the escape. 
 
 Possible sighting 
 
 Authorities scoured farms and fields around an upstate New York town Tuesday, looking for the pair who escaped from a prison days earlier, a local official said. 
 
 The search was prompted by someone who spotted two "suspicious men" walking down a road in Willsboro in the middle of a "driving rainstorm" overnight "in an area that's all ... large farms and fields and wooded lots," Town Supervisor Shaun Gillilland said. As the citizen's car approached them, they took off. 
 
 "They were walking down the road, not dressed for the elements," Gillilland said. "They ran into the fields, from what I understand. So this behavior ... was suspicious." 
 
 Given the meticulous detail involved in the escape, there were concerns fugitives Richard Matt and David Sweat put a similar level of planning into their getaway, including transportation. 
 
 But a law enforcement source close to the investigation doesn't think that's what happened, saying a witness and other indicators suggest the men have been on foot since springing themselves from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, about 40 miles north of the search site in the southern part of Willsboro. 
 
 Local, state and federal authorities set up a search perimeter there. As of 2 p.m., Gillilland wasn't aware that any clothes, vehicles or other evidence had been found, but it was still relatively early in the process. 
 
 The stormy overnight spotting in Willsboro, a town of 2,000 people on Lake Champlain, is one of the first big potential breakthroughs since prison guards found Matt and Sweat's beds empty at 5:30 a.m. Saturday. 
 
 Until then, the closest might have been an account from two Dannemora residents about two men, whom they now believe to be the escaped killers, walking through their backyard shortly after midnight Friday. 
 
 "I go look at him (and) I say, 'What the hell are you doing in my yard? Get the hell out of here,' " one of the residents told ABC's "Good Morning America" of that encounter. 
 
 The two men complied, one apologizing that he'd been on the wrong street. It wasn't until the next day that the resident, who asked not to be named, and his female friend realized who the trespassers probably were. 
 
 Photos: New York prison escape Photos: New York prison escape Richard Matt, left, and David Sweat were discovered missing on Saturday, June 6, at the 5:30 a.m. "standing count" of inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. Hide Caption 1 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape Gov. Andrew Cuomo, shown during a tour of the prison, said of the escapees: "These are dangerous people. They are nothing to be trifled with." Hide Caption 2 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape The hole the inmates cut into a cell wall to escape. The men had side-by-side cells and apparently had obtained power tools to cut through the steel wall, authorities said. 
 
 Hide Caption 3 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape Looking from the catwalk, this is the hole the inmates cut into the wall. The pair followed the catwalk toward a series of tunnels. Hide Caption 4 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape Gov. Cuomo studies the maze of pipes the prisoners navigated during their escape. Hide Caption 5 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape Cuomo climbs a ladder as he examines the prisoners' escape route. Hide Caption 6 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape Cuomo examines the escape route of the prisoners. "It was elaborate; it was sophisticated," he said. Hide Caption 7 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape The inmates used power tools to drill through steel pipes as they made their escape. Hide Caption 8 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape Gov. Cuomo examines a pipe the inmates cut through. Authorities don't know how the prisoners got the power tools. Hide Caption 9 of 10 Photos: New York prison escape Officials look at the manhole through which the inmates crawled to freedom. Hide Caption 10 of 10 
 
 They are killers whom authorities fear could do so again to evade capture. 
 
 Elizabeth Ahern, who lives in Plattsburgh, about five miles from the prison and 25 miles south of the Canadian border, isn't taking any chances. The North Country, she says, is a place where people usually don't bother securing their doors and have weapons to hunt, not to guard themselves against criminals. 
 
 "It's a scary situation," Ahern told CNN's "New Day." "We are now closing our doors and locking them, and making sure we have knives and guns ready to go, just in case." 
 
 Expert: 'They had to have help' 
 
 Finding the two fugitives is job No. 1 for authorities. Job No. 2 is figuring out how they got out -- and who, if anyone, helped them become the first inmates to escape Clinton Correctional in its 170-year history. 
 
 Matthew Horace, a law enforcement veteran who spent years with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said: "They had to have help. ... I wouldn't be surprised if, when this all pans out, there's more than one, two, three or five people that helped them on the inside." 
 
 JUST WATCHED Are New York prison escapees looking for payback? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Are New York prison escapees looking for payback? 02:30 
 
 Matt and Sweat cut through a cell wall that included steel a quarter-inch thick, maneuvered across a catwalk, shimmied down six stories to a tunnel of pipes, followed that tunnel, broke through a double-brick wall, cut into a 24-inch steam pipe, shimmied their way through the steam pipe, cut another hole so they could get out of the pipe and finally surfaced through a manhole. 
 
 If other people are proved to have played a role in Matt and Sweat's escape or their life on the lam, they'll pay a price. An accomplice could be convicted of a misdemeanor for helping introduce nondangerous contraband into a prison. Or they could get up to seven years in jail for the class D felony of "hindering prosecution" by providing "criminal assistance" to someone sentenced to 20 years to life for a violent crime. 
 
 Photo: In the cell of one of escaped inmates, looking at the hole cut in the wall as part of escape pic.twitter.com/tGAtt8xHyb — Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 6, 2015 
 
 Slain deputy's brother: 'I just hope he doesn't come back' 
 
 Matt and Sweat are convicted killers whose behavior is prison appears to have been good. 
 
 Matt was convicted on three counts of murder, three counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery after he kidnapped a man and beat him to death in December 1997, state police said. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. 
 
 Photos: Amazing prison escapes Photos: Amazing prison escapes New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, is shown the manhole where two convicted murderers escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, on Saturday, June 6, 2015. Police say Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, escaped from the maximum-security prison using power tools. Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: Amazing prison escapes George Rivas is sworn in at a trial in Dallas in November 2003. On December 13, 2000, Rivas' gang, known as the Texas Seven, overpowered workers at a prison in Kenedy, Texas. They stole the workers' clothes, broke into the prison's armory to get guns and drove away in a prison truck. They committed several robberies and gunned down a police officer. Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: Amazing prison escapes French criminal Pascal Payet escaped prison twice using hijacked helicopters. His last escape occurred in 2007. Four men hijacked a helicopter, flew it to the prison Payet was being held in and helped him escape. Three months later, Payet was caught in Spain. Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: Amazing prison escapes Michel Vaujour is shown on trial in Paris in 1991. His wife, Nadine Vaujour, flew a helicopter to his Paris prison in 1986, and he forced his way to the roof by wielding nectarines painted as grenades. Nadine was later arrested, and Michel was killed in a failed bank robbery. Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: Amazing prison escapes Northern Ireland's Maze Prison, once considered one of the most secure prisons in Europe, was closed in 2000 after a series of escape attempts. The largest of these occurred in 1983, when 38 prisoners escaped by smuggling in weapons and hijacking a food delivery van. Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: Amazing prison escapes In 1962, Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin escaped a prison that was thought to be inescapable -- Alcatraz in San Francisco. They crafted dummy heads with real human hair to trick guards. They also used homemade drills to enlarge vent holes, and they formed raincoats into a raft to escape the island prison. They still have not been found. It is presumed that they drowned. Hide Caption 6 of 7 Photos: Amazing prison escapes American criminal John Dillinger, center, sits in court in 1934 after being accused of killing a police officer. Later that year, he escaped an Indiana jail wielding a wooden gun he whittled. After imprisoning guards, he drove away in the sheriff's car. A few months later, he was shot dead outside of a theater in Chicago. Hide Caption 7 of 7 
 
 In 1986, he escaped from an Erie County jail. Upon his capture, Matt was sent to a maximum security prison in Elmira, New York, on charges of escape and forgery. He was released from the Elmira Correctional Facility in May 1990. 
 
 Sweat was serving a life sentence without parole for killing sheriff's Deputy Kevin Tarsia in 2002. 
 
 It has been years since these murders. While at Clinton Correctional, they were in the prison's "honor block" for those who have gone years without significant disciplinary action, according to a state official briefed on the investigation. 
 
 Being in an honor block carries privileges such as having hot plates and refrigerators in their cells and congregating for hours in a central gallery area each evening with fellow inmates, said Rich Plumadore, who worked at Clinton Correctional for 35 years. About 250 to 300 inmates are in this unit at the prison. ||||| Two murderers who escaped from a New York prison four days ago may be heading to Vermont, governors of the two states announced on Wednesday, as police confirmed that a civilian employee at the prison had befriended the two men. 
 
 “We have information that suggests that they thought New York was going to be hot,” said Vermont governor Peter Shumlin, “and Vermont would be cooler in terms of law enforcement and that a camp in Vermont might be a better place to be.” 
 
 New York governor Andrew Cuomo said that police had not ruled out any possibility for the location or locations of Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34. 
 
 “It’s very possible that they had a several-hour head start on us,” he said. Vermont police had mobilized around the state and on Lake Champlain, and were coordinating with their New York counterparts, the governors said. 
 
 Cuomo also alluded to the simultaneous search efforts in Dannemora, the tiny village in the shadow of the 170-year-old Clinton Correctional Facility, where police set to searching homes, and in Willsboro, where a tip prompted a mass search through forests and fields. 
 
 New York prison break - how two murderers escaped Read more 
 
 New York state police major Charles Guess said that the home searches “are not the result of a new lead” but rather “retracing steps made early in the investigation”. 
 
 
 
 Joseph D’Amico, the New York police superintendent, said that officers had received more than 500 leads and would check “behind every tree, under every rock and inside every structure”. 
 
 D’Amico also confirmed that one female civilian employee “was befriended or befriended the inmates, and may have had some sort of role in assisting them”, but declined to provide any further details. 
 
 “It’s been a long few days,” Cuomo said, before urging people to call police if they see suspicious people but to steer clear of confrontation. “These men are nothing to be trifled with.” 
 
 He and D’Amico conceded that the investigation inside and outside the prison have yet to produce tangible clues. “I have no information on where they are or what they’re doing, I’ll be honest with you,” D’Amico said. 
 
 Since Matt and Sweat chiseled through their cell wall with power tools and clambered through pipes and sewers out to freedom in the town, investigators have for days interviewed uniformed and civilian employees and residents of the town. A spokesman for the Civil Services Employees Association said most of the about 150 civilian employees who work at the prison have been interviewed. 
 
 Earlier this week, New York governor Andrew Cuomo echoed many investigators’ suspicions that the inmates were assisted by someone who provided them the tools and possibly a cellphone, but police have not ruled out the possibility of Matt and Sweat acting alone. 
 
 At least one civilian employee has drawn special notice from law enforcement for reportedly having known the prisoners from her work in the prison’s tailor shop, which Matt and Sweat would have had access to due to their good behavior and residence on the prison’s “honor block”. The woman was questioned by police, officers confirmed. 
 
 Woman questioned over New York prison break amid sprawling manhunt Read more 
 
 On Saturday night, she was treated at Alice Hyde Medical Center, hospital spokesperson Megan Avery confirmed. 
 
 Avery said that the woman was treated and released “during the period in question”, and the woman’s son told NBC she had suffered a panic attack that night. “She is not the kind of person that’s going to risk her life or other people’s lives to let these guys escape,” he said. 
 
 An unnamed source told CNN that the woman’s phone made multiple calls to associates of Matt, though the source did not say whether she knew her phone had been used. Neither the woman nor any other civilian or prison employee has been charged or arrested as of Wednesday morning. Calls to the woman and her sons went unanswered. 
 
 Hundreds of investigators also descended on a Willsboro, a small town near the borders of New York, Vermont and Canada, after they received a tip on Tuesday that the duo had fled into the brush after a civilian spotted them on the road there. 
 
 Someone called police to report “two suspicious men walking down a very rural road in the southern part of our town, in the middle of a driving rainstorm”, Willsboro town supervisor Shaun Gillilland told the Wall Street Journal. 
 
 The men, “not dressed for the elements”, fled into the fields as the witness drove toward them, Gillilland said. 
 
 With only about 2,000 residents, Willsoboro rests near the shores of Lake Champlain and is only a ferry ride away from Burlington, Vermont. The town is about an hour’s drive from Canada, said resident Mark Bofey, and an extremely rural area full of fields, forests and swampy terrain. 
 
 Bofey said that the city had quieted considerably since yesterday, when “the whole front of our house was loaded with troopers and marshals and reporters – it was pretty much the command center for this thing”. 
 
 He said he hasn’t seen anything in particular, but that “unsurprisingly it’s been kind of nerve-racking” to have two convicted murderers – Matt killed and dismembered a former employee, Sweat shot dead a deputy sheriff – being chased so close to his otherwise quiet home. 
 
 Bofey’s husband, Darren Darrah, told the Press Republican that the terrain would be difficult for both convicts and investigators, saying it took police “about three hours to get through a big swamp”. 
 
 Former law enforcement officials have warned against speculation without evidence regarding possible accomplices or escape techniques. Martin Horn, a former New York City commissioner of correction and probation, said that the inmates should not be underestimated and could have escaped without a conscious accomplice. 
 
 “You have to always assume the worst and consider if one things is true then other things are equally possible,” he said. Given the careful planning of the escape, he said it was likely that Matt and Sweat similarly planned travel outside the prison, but investigators appear to be operating on the assumption that the men are on foot. Law enforcement sources have said it seems likely that the convicts’ pickup car did not arrive as planned. 
 
 A $100,000 reward has been posted for information leading to the men’ capture, and authorities have called Matt and Sweat “dangerous” and “desperate”. People who knew the pair have similarly described them as clever but unpredictable and violent men. 
 
 “He has a genius IQ,” Matt’s 23-year-old son Nicholas Harris told the Buffalo News. “I can’t believe they let this happen.” 
 
 Matt has also been shot multiple times and carried on unfazed, his son said: “This guy has bullet holes on his body. He’s been shot like nine times. It’s like they can’t kill him. He showed me the scars on his forearms from another time he escaped.”
– Authorities are swarming the small upstate New York town of Willsboro to find the two convicted killers who escaped from prison last week, reports the Wall Street Journal. A motorist spotted two men walking on a "very rural" road last night, and they took off into the fields when he stopped, say police. Willsboro is about 35 miles from where Richard Matt and David Sweat busted out of the Clinton Correctional Facility. More details are filling in on the great escape, too. The leading theory is that a female employee of the prison who worked with the two men in its tailor shop smuggled in a small electrical saw and perhaps other tools such as a sledgehammer, reports the Albany Times Union. The woman also may have provided access to a cell phone after striking up a relationship with Matt. The men reportedly used the saw to cut holes in the metal walls of their cells, and the holes "led to a cavernous utility bowel inside the prison where the men spliced an electrical cord into a light fixture to power the saw they then used to cut a large hole in a 24-inch steam pipe that led to a sewer outside the prison," the Albany paper reports. The final barrier to freedom was a lock on the inside of a manhole cover, which they bashed with a sledgehammer. Authorities say the woman or someone else might have had second thoughts and scrapped a plan to pick them up Friday night. This is Matt's third escape attempt, his son tells the Buffalo News. The first was from a prison near Buffalo in 1986 (he climbed a wall and remained free for five days) and the second was in 1997 after he got captured in Mexico. “He said he made it up to the roof of the prison and got shot in the shoulder," says his son, who adds that his father has a "genius IQ."