It is a heartbreaking situation and unfortunately not as rare as it should be.
Twenty-eight years inside means the world your friend walked out into looks almost nothing like the one he left. The technology, the pace, the social dynamics, the economy, the simple logistics of daily life, all of it has transformed while he has been living in a completely controlled environment where every decision was made for him. Institutionalization runs that deep after nearly three decades. The structure that felt like a cage inside becomes, paradoxically, the only framework a person knows how to operate within.
Reentry after extreme long-term incarceration is one of the most difficult transitions in human experience and it receives almost no meaningful support from the system that created the situation. Two months of supervised release with minimal resources, limited job prospects, and the overwhelming sensory and social overload of modern life is not a recipe for success. It is a setup for exactly what happened.
That does not excuse the violation or remove the consequences. But it does explain something that looks incomprehensible from the outside. Freedom after 28 years is not simply freedom. It is a foreign country without a map, a language guide, or anyone who truly understands what the adjustment requires.
The tragedy is that the system invests almost nothing in preparing people for that transition after releasing them from decades of total control. Until that changes, stories like your friend's will keep repeating. What he needed was intensive reentry support from day one. What most people in his situation get is a bus ticket and a list of parole conditions.