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What you should know about Escape at Dannemora prisoners

In 2015, two men escaped from the maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, sparking a three-week manhunt. One of them was serving a life sentence for the murder of a Broome County sheriff's deputy.

“Escape at Dannemora,” a Showtime true-crime series about the prison break, is now streaming on Netflix and is steadily climbing into the streaming service’s top 10 charts.

David Sweat, played by Paul Dano in the series, was shot and captured miles from the Canadian border on June 28, 2015. He pleaded guilty to escape and promoting prison contraband and continues to serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole in state prison.

Here's why Sweat was in prison in Dannemora and how the escape took place.

More: “Escape at Dannemora”: What you want to know about series on Netflix

The crime story of David Sweat

During the manhunt for her son in 2015, Pamela Sweat told the Press and Sun Bulletin The family lived in Binghamton for many years and their son attended Calvin Coolidge Elementary School, although his name was not listed in school records for the Binghamton, Susquehanna Valley and Windsor school districts.

David Sweat began having problems and acting out at age 9, she said. He was verbally abusive and her issues with him led to an “emotional breakdown.”

In 1997, when David Sweat was 17, Broome County Judge Martin E. Smith sentenced him to two to four years in prison. He served 19 months for attempted burglary. He and a friend had previously planned an elaborate theft of computers and cash from a youth group home in Binghamton. The plan was to tie up a woman and lock her in a storage room.

It never happened, but court documents unsealed in 2003 suggest it was a pattern in which Sweat planned crimes on paper, with sketches of the target building and the location of the items he wanted to steal.

David Sweat pleaded guilty to killing a sheriff's deputy

At age 22, Sweat and his cousin Jeffrey Nabinger Jr. robbed a fireworks and gun store in Great Bend, Pennsylvania, in the early hours of July 4, 2002.

They drove to Grange Hall Park in Kirkwood to retrieve weapons from their stolen pickup truck. Around 4 a.m., Broome County Sheriff's Deputy Kevin J. Tarsia spotted the two while on patrol.

As Tarsia approached, Sweat and Nabinger shot him several times, two of the shots hitting him directly in the head. Sweat ran down Tarsia's vehicle and both fled the scene.

Police received a tip and Sweat and Nabinger were arrested three days later. To avoid the death penalty, both men pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

What happened at Clinton Correctional Facility?

At the Clinton Correctional Facility, Sweat met his accomplice Richard Matt, a man serving a 25-year sentence for the murder and dismemberment of his former boss.

With the help of a prison employee named Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell, who secretly obtained supplies, the two escaped the maximum security prison in early June 2015.

After their escape, both men were on the run in the Adirondacks for three weeks.

Matt was shot and killed by police officers, and two days later, Sweat was shot and captured near the Canadian border and returned to the state prison, where he remains today.

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