TITUS LAKE, N.Y. -- Imagine being alone at a remote lakehouse and finding out that the massive manhunt for Richard Matt and David Sweat is at your front door.
For one man on Titus Lake, it turned all too real, all too fast.
"Then in came the helicopters, in came the police, and we began to say, 'wow, this is serious,'" said Jerry Child, who lives near Titus Lake.
Child was there for most of the manhunt, and he was planning to take his boat out when Matt was shot a few hundred yards from his property.
"I went out on the dock uncovering it and all of a sudden I saw the helicopters swooping in, back and forth, back and forth at the south end of the lake on Elephant's Head Mountain," says Child.
Child says he never heard a shot, but the number of people patrolling became more intense. While he says it was odd to have law enforcement looking through his house and cabin, he was happy they checked it out. Towards the end of the manhunt, Child wasn't allowed back in his cabin.
"They just simply did not want you in here because at some point in time, they thought it would be a confrontation, and they wanted no one in the way," says Child.
According to Child, law enforcement was afraid of a potential hostage situation, putting both resident and officers at risk. An officer let him get the necessities, and Child went back to Corning, where he lives.
Tuesday was his first day back since the manhunt ended, but he says Malone isn't quite the same.
"Even though I've lived other places, this is still home, and it really feels like it was taken over by events, and I guess by the end of the day, everyone's probably glad they're gone," said Child.