ELMIRA, N.Y. -- The escape from Clinton's maximum security prison is the first in the state since two men made it outside the walls of the Elmira Correctional Facility in 2003.
Inmates Timothy Vail and Timothy Morgan hammered through their cell ceiling before heading to the prison roof.
There they used sheets to make their way to the ground and outside the facility.
Local police recall an all-hands-on-deck search for the inmates.
"You're up there checking and cheking twice," Elmira Police Chief Michael Robertson said. "You can't make any assumptions because you don't know where a person is going to go. Obviously somebody that's escaped is desparate, and you don't know what their next move is going to be. It was definitely making sure that we were trying to cover every angle."
Police captured Vail and Morgan a day after their escape.
After the escape, Vail spent seven years at Clinton Correctional Facility before being transfered.