Three weeks before 19-year-old Holly Boutilier’s body was found inside a small, dilapidated shack on the banks of the Penobscot River, city officials were standing in front of it discussing plans to tear it down.
They were not necessarily thinking of it as a possible location for a homicide, but instead were concerned about the sinkholes surrounding it and the danger that its isolation posed to the small transient population who sometimes bunked there.
One of those transients discovered Boutilier’s body last Sunday afternoon.
“The shack is going to be torn down, but it’s not a direct result of this homicide. It’s been in the works for a couple of months,” Bangor Police Chief Ron Gastia said this week.
Boutilier was from Old Town and was known among some in Bangor who serve the homeless population, according to news reports, and also spent time bunking with various friends.
Her death this week once again has focused this community’s attention on the invisible population who gather in makeshift camps under the city’s bridges and along its riverbanks.
Shawn Yardley, the director of Bangor’s Health and Community Services, said he had received a number of calls this week from people concerned about such sites.
“They are concerned for their own safety and the safety of those who are living in those places and just want to make sure we know they are there,” Yardley said Friday.
The development along Main Street near the river has pushed some of the homeless population farther down Main Street behind Hollywood Slots and up to the Veterans’ Remembrance Bridge.
Within the past two months city officials, including Gastia and Yardley, have been meeting with advocates for the homeless, mental health providers and representatives from Pine Tree Legal to come up with a plan to deter people from hanging out and essentially living in certain areas, the little green shack hidden among the trees near the railroad tracks being one of them.
When Gastia and city engineer Jim Ring traversed the riverbanks to take a look at the shack a few weeks ago, they were disturbed by what they saw.
“We had heard of this building down there and that people were living in it. They gathered firewood along the banks and made fires to keep warm in the winter. There was a flower bed and a little rock wall,” Gastia said.
But it was not a safe place, though one could question the level of safety of anyone sleeping on the streets.
“There are sinkholes all around there and old cribwork. Honestly, someone could fall into one of those sinkholes and right into the river and no one would know it,” Gastia said. “Plus it is so isolated. It’s so difficult for us as the police to keep this population safe anyway, and when they are in a location such as that which is so isolated, then it is that much more difficult.”
To the city’s credit, it was trying to find the best way to move the homeless from their makeshift camp — a better alternative to the days gone by of officers poking the homeless with a nightstick and ordering them to move on.
But the population that congregates in those areas of the city is usually the most difficult to work with. Most either refuse the services that the agencies in town offer or for other reasons, such as violent or abusive behavior, are not allowed at some of the area shelters.
There is no evidence that Boutilier or her accused killer had any connection to the shack along the riverbank or ever stayed there. Gastia and Yardley acknowledge that her murder could have happened in any isolated area of the city.
But it happened there and as a result has brought attention to this troubled part of our population.
The riverfront is one of the city’s best assets, yet a portion of it is considered one of the more unsafe parts of town. The wooded pathway along Kenduskeag Stream is a great little hike, but most would caution you not to take it alone. It, too, serves as “home” to the homeless.
“We need to get these people out into the open. We need to try to engage them and get them connected with services that many of them have traditionally refused. If we can’t see them, we can’t help them,” Gastia said.
But one must ask whether, as a community, we are ready for them to be seen, or are we more comfortable having them, like the little green shack, hidden in pockets of the city among the trees.