Prisoners Escape During Transfer

Police were in a frantic search today for two escaped convicts - including a man involved in the shooting of two FBI agents - after the fugitives escaped from a prison bus in Northeast Philadelphia last night.

Melvin Williams, 22, of Hicks Street near Bristol and Anthony Damon, 26, of Gratz Street near Venango, fled into the Pennypack Park woods after their breakout. They were wearing prison pants, authorities said.

Prison officials said the 10:15 p.m. break came as the two men were on a prison bus hauling them and 15 other inmates from the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility to the Philadelphia Industrial Corrections Center, located less than a mile away on State Road in Holmesburg. The bus had just pulled up to the prison when the pair bolted, said authorities.

``The two guys managed to get out of their handcuffs and broke the emergency exit open in the back of the bus and took flight just as the bus was pulling into PICC,'' said Robert Eskind, spokesman for the Philadelphia prison system. ``Their handcuffs were left behind on the bus.''

It was unclear how the men freed themselves from the cuffs and got out of the armored bus.

Williams, a drug boss who is serving time for ordering the brazen Broad Street shootout in March 1994 that left an accomplice dead and two federal agents injured, was being held in Philadelphia until U.S. marshals could retrieve him.

In September, Williams was convicted in U.S. District Court of conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to assault and kill federal agents, and related charges in the shooting.

Damon was serving time for a separate case involving criminal conspiracy, robbery, possession of an instrument of crime and simple assault.

He would have been eligible for release in April at the earliest, according to Eskind.

The men were last seen headed through the woods toward Frankford Avenue. One was wearing a dark-colored sweater and the other a white sweater.