David Sweat's mother says she would have 'knocked him out' if he fled to her house

The mother of David Sweat, the inmate who escaped from a prison in upstate New York three weeks ago and was captured alive Sunday, said she was relieved that her son wasn't killed while on the run.

"I just want to know what's the matter with my son," Pamela Sweat told TWC News Binghamton as she fought back tears. Sweat said she was never worried about her son coming to her home, because he knew "if he would have come here I would have knocked him out and had them guys take him to jail by themselves. That's just the way I am. I've always done that to him when he was bad."

David Sweat was serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff's deputy in 2002. Pamela Sweat said her son "always got in trouble" when he was younger and she would "grab him by the ear and take him to the police station." Over the past three weeks, Sweat said she didn't watch coverage of the manhunt, and cried when she found out her son didn't suffer the same fate as his fellow escapee Richard Matt, who was shot and killed Friday. "He should have stayed [in prison]," she said. "He's gotta go back and do what he's gotta do."

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