Driving along a winding mountain road, heading toward Pioche’s Sept. 1 fireworks show, a Lincoln County resident caught a glimpse of a parked van belonging to the nearby honor camp. The person stopped to help and was told that everything was okay. Then the van driver held up a picture and inquired, “Have you seen this man?”
At this point, the honor camp escapee, Chaize Exkano, had been missing for nearly seven hours.
The honor camp, located in the foothills below Pioche, is a place that helps rehabilitate those that have lost their way. All convicts in the camp have been determined to be honorable enough to be allowed to come and go as they please, provided that they do the jobs they’re assigned and return for the daily counts. It was during one such count that an unnamed inmate disappeared.
“He may have figured out something with a friend,” said one law enforcement source, “because the time he went missing was around the same time that everyone was heading out of Pioche. He could’ve hopped in a car with a buddy and went to Vegas.”
Since Pioche was in the middle of Labor Day celebrations, the town was full of tourists. This could have allowed an inmate to blend into the crowd and slip out of Lincoln County unnoticed.
The convict was located Sept. 1 and brought back into custody. There was very little fear that he would hurt anyone, since the prisoners of the honor camp are “harmless,” according to some. Sadly, “Most of these guys are in the last few months of their sentence,” the law enforcement source lamented, “so it’s just a shame.”
Breaking the honor camp rules leads to another sentence and removal from the honor camp station.
