BENTON, Ill. (AP) — A convicted Iowa bank robber serving a roughly six-year sentence at a federal prison camp in southern Illinois is accused of trying to escape.
Fifty-five-year-old David John Pederson was arraigned Thursday in U.S. District Court in Benton on the escape charge.
Prosecutors say Pederson was being transferred in March from the Marion camp to a halfway house in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when he left the extended limits of his confinement, constituting an escape.
He was indicted on the escape charge on May 9. That felony is punishable by up to five years in prison.
Pederson now is in the custody of the Illinois prison system, where he is serving a 20-year sentence for aggravated vehicular hijacking.
Online court records don’t show whether he has an attorney.
