Prison worker gets seven-year term for aiding escape

A former jail worker will be behind bars for up to seven years after helping two convicted killers escape from a New York prison.

Joyce Mitchell, 52, provided inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat with tools that allowed them to break through the wall of their cell to freedom.

Mitchell sobbed in court on Monday, saying she made a “horrible mistake”.

Matt and Sweat escaped on 6 June, sparking a huge three-week manhunt across New York and Vermont.

Hundreds of police officers scoured the remote wooded areas near the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.

“A large portion of the local population were terrorised,” Judge Kevin Ryan said on Monday. “Many were forced to flee their homes.”

The inmates stayed together for week,s sleeping outside and hiding in vacation homes, but they eventually separated.

Both men had been serving life sentences at the maximum-security prison when they escaped.

Matt, who had escaped from prison before, was convicted of dismembering his former employer while Sweat had been found guilty of killing a sheriff’s deputy.