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

David Sweat after he was captured Sunday.
(Image credit: Twitter.com/JenHenCNN)

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.

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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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.