STOCKTON - Ralph “Bucky” Phillips' high-profile flight from justice began when he took a commercial grade can opener to the ceiling of a prison kitchen just four days before his scheduled release.

As a fugitive, his actions have been no less brazen.

Since his April 2 escape from the Erie County Correctional Facility, authorities believe Phillips has zigzagged across a good portion of the state, helping himself to food, clothes and guns in unattended homes and hunting cabins, leaving a telltale trail of stolen vehicles along the way.

Just once has the law caught up with him. That was June 10, when two state troopers pulled behind a stolen Mustang he was believed to be driving in Chemung County. Phillips' response, say authorities, was to open fire.

Trooper Sean Brown was shot in the abdomen and seriously wounded but is expected to survive.

The shooting ignited a national manhunt that includes a $25,000 reward for information leading to Phillips' arrest.

“We consider him armed and very dangerous,” said Joseph Gerace, sheriff of Chautauqua County, where Phillips grew up in the town of Stockton.

Although police have tracked Phillips across numerous towns from the Binghamton area west, they believe he has returned to Chautauqua County near the Pennsylvania border, to familiar territory and a base of friends.

On Wednesday, state police used dogs and all-terrain vehicles to scour the central part of the county after a reported Phillips siting. Drivers were asked to open their trunks at a police checkpoint as search helicopters circled above the wooded and sparsely populated terrain.

Authorities said they had linked Phillips to the overnight burglary of a seasonal residence in the area and suspected him in the burglary of a Department of Environmental Conservation office later in the morning.

On Sunday, police in Chautauqua County recovered a minivan Phillips was believed to have stolen near Binghamton after the trooper's shooting.

“It would not surprise us to know that he's here,” Gerace said. “His history and pattern has been to return to Chautauqua County.”

But finding a man skilled at hiding in one of the state's largest counties with its vast stretches of undeveloped land is difficult.

“A needle in a hay stack,” is how Gerace characterized the search.

State Police Major Michael Manning urged residents to report thefts of food or gasoline and to remove keys from ATVs and other vehicles. Homeowners were warned against opening their doors to strangers.

The activity did not frighten Debra Edson as she worked a produce stand near where officers were searching.

“I grew up with Bucky...As far as I'm concerned he's harmless. I don't believe he's done everything they assume he's done,” she said.

“Warning:” reads a wanted poster picturing Phillips with and without his glasses and black mustache and beard. “Subject is armed with a handgun and sawed off shotgun and has previously threatened `suicide by cop.”'

Phillips' pattern has been to steal a car, switch its license plates, dump it and steal another, police said, leaving officers to wonder with each vehicle they approach whether Phillips is behind the wheel. Adding to the unease is a note Phillips once left behind for officers when he was released or transferred from the Chautauqua County jail several years ago, Gerace said. The note included a threat “to splatter pig meat all over Chautauqua County.”

“It escalates your defense mechanism,” Gerace said. “You are a potential target ... Every car stopped becomes a situation that you have to evaluate very carefully and be very defensive.”

Phillips is a 6-foot Seneca Indian, 240 pounds. At 44, he has spent most of his adult life in prison for a variety of burglary and thefts. He had less than a week remaining on a 90-day sentence for a parole violation when he pried through the ceiling of the medium security prison, climbed onto the roof and jumped to the parking lot below.

Family and friends worry how the story will end.

His sister, Mitty Cornelius, fears police will shoot first and ask questions later.

“They're making him out to be a monster, like he's killed people,” she told the Dunkirk Observer in Chautauqua County. “I don't know what he's done and hasn't done, but I know him and know he's never hurt anyone before.”

A friend and former employer recalled a conversation with Phillips last December. Phillips was determined not to go back to jail.

“He will never surrender,” Dan Suitor of North Tonawanda told The Buffalo News. “He will not go back. Mentally, he can't do it.”