Shyquinn Dix, who starred as a basketball player at the University of Maine at Presque Isle after becoming a success story for a prison rehabilitation program that got him featured on 60 Minutes, died over the weekend.
Dix was killed in a car crash on Saturday in Connecticut, according to his college coach.
Details about the crash were unavailable Tuesday.
Dix, who was in his early 30s, was a two-time All-North Atlantic Conference First Team guard in two seasons with the Owls from 2018 to 2020, averaging 17 points and six rebounds per game. He played a third college season at Bryant & Stratton in Buffalo, New York, where he was the team’s second-leading scorer.
His story was central to a 2019 feature on 60 Minutes — CBS’ TV news magazine — about the T.R.U.E. (Truthful, Respectful, Understanding, Elevating) program at the maximum security Cheshire Correctional Institution in Connecticut.
The notoriously harsh prison, nicknamed “The Rock” in a nod to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, launched the program in 2017 at the request of Daniel Malloy, the then-Connecticut governor who is now the chancellor of the UMaine system.
Malloy got the idea from touring prisons in Germany, where the primary goal is rehabilitation. The country has a recidivism rate roughly half that of the U.S.
The two-year program is for inmates aged 18-25, who have to apply and be accepted by prison staff. In the program, prisoners often mingle freely with correctional officers and their days are filled with intense counseling and self-improvement activities.
Dix was sentenced to four years at Cheshire Correctional for felony check fraud, but had his sentence reduced through the T.R.U.E. program.
Before going to prison, Dix had played basketball at a junior college in Nebraska. A corrections officer noticed his basketball talent and worked with him to reach out to college coaches to see if any team would give him a shot. UMPI head coach Dan Kane did.
“I’ve always been someone that believes in second chances,” Kane said Tuesday. “My dad was a police officer and he always tells stories about people that turned their lives around.”
Kane, through a friend of a friend, connected with James Vassar, the corrections officer advocating for Dix. Kane and Dix wrote letters back and forth and built up a relationship that culminated with the Owls’ coach taking a recruiting visit to the prison.
“Meeting him in person and talking was the point where I’m like, ‘yeah, we should give this guy a chance,’” Kane said.
Dix was the biggest recruit in Kane’s first full recruiting class and helped UMPI to its first NAC playoff victory in 2020. Off the court, he was “probably the most charismatic person I’ve ever met,” Kane said.
The 5-foot, 11-inch guard had a great sense of humor and was always talking trash, Kane said. He majored in social work and made the dean’s list. He has three sons.
“He’s just one of those people [where] he meets someone and he makes them feel good, and even if you’ve only met him a couple of times, someone would be like, ‘yeah, that’s my best friend.’ He just draws people to him.”
When the 60 Minutes program aired, Dix’s No. 10 UMPI jersey hung on the wall of the T.R.U.E. wing at Cheshire Correctional as a reminder of his success to other inmates.
“Being able to be around a place where I can just be me and just work on myself and live out my dream is wonderful to me,” Dix said to CBS’ Bill Whitaker at the time. “I wake up in my dorm and I’m like, ‘I’m really in college right now, this is crazy.’”
