Cops warn that Americans are in 'grave danger' after killer inmates escape without a trace

It has been two days since inmates Donnie Russell "Whiskey" Rowe, 43, and Ricky Dubose, 24, killed two guards and escaped from a prison bus. Authorities have now expanded the hunt beyond state lines, offering a reward of $130,000 for information that leads to their capture, USA Today reports. "This is the greatest [search] effort I have ever seen, and it's not just because of the crime. It's because the public is in grave danger," said Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills. He added, "We are looking for them anywhere they might be on planet Earth."

Rowe had been serving a life sentence since 2002 over convictions including robbery and aggravated assault. Dubose was serving a 20-year sentence for armed robbery and aggravated assault. After killing the guards and abandoning the prison bus, Rowe and Dubose carjacked a passerby's car at gunpoint and ransacked a nearby house for food and clothes. The last thing police know is that the pair stole a car in the early hours of Wednesday morning. "They've had time to be halfway across the United States," Sills added.

Rowe and Dubose had occasionally shared a prison cell; they left more than two dozen other inmates behind in handcuffs when they fled the bus. "Sills said investigators were trying to determine how the killers got out of the cage and into the driver's compartment," USA Today writes. "He said he feared the killers, armed with the officers' semiautomatic handguns, would kill again."

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"It's become a nationwide search," said FBI Special Agent David LeValley, who is leading the search. "We need the eyes and ears of everybody, really, in this country to be on the lookout."