LARNED — The state agency tasked with oversight of Larned State Hospital has honored a request for reimbursement to the Pawnee County Sheriff’s Office in tracking down an escaped inmate from the Sexual Predator Treatment Program last year.

At its regular meeting on Monday, the Pawnee County Commissioners informed Sheriff Scott King that the county was in receipt of $17,696.66 issued by the state for department expenses incurred during the search for John Freeman Colt, who escaped from the SPTP at LSH on June 30, 2021. Colt was later apprehended in Wayne County, Utah, by local authorities and the U.S. Marshals Service on Sept. 27, 2021.

On Jan. 9, Sheriff Scott King presented the Commissioners with a list of department expenses that, at minimum, included more than 661 hours logged by the PCSO detective assigned to the case and a trip to Utah to retrieve evidence used by Colt in the escape.

On Monday, Sheriff King said he was told by the Commissioners that the payment had been received electronically by the county clerk on Thursday, Feb. 24.

The reimbursement mirrors a similar reimbursement of $31,032 covering expenses for transportation, medical treatment and housing for Perry Isley Jr., who had escaped from the facility on April 24, 1987, and again in August 2008. The minimum cost presented by King was $35 per day for a two-year period. The county pays costs related to prosecution/incarceration for crimes committed in the facility. In situations where a patient is especially dangerous, the Pawnee County Sheriff obtains a warrant to take the patient into custody, then transfers the patient to an available jail facility.