Police in Washington state hunt for escaped convict

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Police in Washington state were hunting on Wednesday for the second of two non-violent prisoners who escaped from an outside-prison work crew cleaning up a gun range, a spokeswoman for the minimum-security corrections facility said.

A work crew supervisor noticed the two men had fled an area where they had been clearing brush and trimming bushes at the Clark Rifles Range in southern Washington state on Tuesday, Larch Corrections Center spokeswoman Danette Gadberry said.

It was unclear if the crews were cleaning the range while it was open to shooters. While the men were not believed to be armed or violent, Gadberry warned the public not to engage them and to call police if they are spotted.

Fugitive Randall Marlow, 44, convicted of theft and other property crimes, was being pursued by about two dozen Department of Corrections officials backed by local law enforcement, Gadberry said. He had been scheduled for release in 2016.

The other prisoner, 33-year-old Donald McLain, convicted of forgery, theft, and drug violations, was captured without incident on Tuesday evening about six miles from the gun range in Battle Ground. He had been scheduled to be released in 2017.

Larch Corrections Center, some 20 miles northeast of Vancouver, near Washington state's border with Oregon, houses an all-male, minimum-custody prison population of about 480 offenders, Gadberry said.

In another fugitive case on the other side of the country, police have expanded their search for two killers who escaped earlier this month from the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York, near the Canadian border.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Sandra Maler)