FORT KENT, Maine — All Jessica Potila of Fort Kent wanted to do was help a homeless man get home in time for Thanksgiving.
Instead, she is spending the day before the holiday talking to police in two counties, dealing with her insurance company and wondering how she is going to get her rental van out of an impound lot in Calais.
Potila, 44, who reports for The Fiddlehead Focus digital newspaper and St. John Valley Times weekly, had spent part of Tuesday interviewing Pierre Triplett, 21, a native of Missouri who had been living on the streets of Fort Kent for the last three months, for a feature on homelessness. (The Fiddlehead Focus is owned by the Bangor Daily News’ parent company, Bangor Publishing.)
By late that night, Triplett was in Washington County Jail in Machias after being pulled over by police in Indian Township allegedly going 52 mph in a 25 mph zone on U.S. Route 1 in a van Potila is renting while her own car is in the body shop.
“None of this makes a lot of sense,” Potila said Wednesday morning. “I am really embarrassed, I can tell you.
“I’d been looking to interview [Triplett] for a while,” she said. “Who chooses northern Maine to be homeless in the winter?”
Potila said she had first spoken to members of the Fort Kent Police Department before she approached Triplett.
“I knew the local police had had dealings with him,” she said. “They told me he was really a nice guy and was very soft spoken.”
Triplett does, however, have five outstanding charges for criminal trespass pending in Fort Kent, according to Fort Kent police Sgt. Dalen Boucher.
“He was caught sleeping in laundry rooms in different apartments around town,” Boucher said Wednesday morning. “He also was found sleeping next to the ATM in the [Cyr Hall] lobby at the [University of Maine at Fort Kent] a couple of nights.”
Triplett also has a previous, out of state charge for theft, according to Boucher, and he is scheduled to appear in Fort Kent District Court Dec. 5 on the trespass charges.
“None of it was violent or seemed dangerous,” Potila said. “The theft charge was for stealing food from a grocery store, and he was not ever seen using drugs or alcohol.”
Potila said she learned Tuesday that Boucher was growing concerned about Triplett having nowhere to live as winter set in and had made contact with the young man’s sister Andria Roundtree in Philadelphia via social media.
The two worked together to arrange and pay for reliable transportation for Triplett from Fort Kent to her home, including reserving a cab to take him to Caribou at 5 a.m. Wednesday.
“The family really wanted him to come home, and Sgt. Boucher arranged to get him a bus ticket for [Wednesday] morning out of Caribou,” Potila said. “Everything seemed normal, and [Triplett] seemed genuinely happy to be going back to Philly and had had enough of living outside.”
After the interview with Triplett, which ended up being at the Fort Kent Police Department, Potila said she learned he had nowhere to stay that night before taking the cab at 5 a.m. the next morning.
“I was really concerned about him,” she said. “He’s 21, and I have a son who is almost 21, and I guess I felt maternal toward him.”
Potila said she offered to let Triplett spend the night in her rental van, which would be parked outside of her house.
“We were getting our first big snow yesterday,” she said. “I told him, ‘I can’t let you stay in my house, but you are welcome to stay in my van.’”
She added that Boucher supported her invitation and assured Triplett it was just common sense to not extend the offer beyond that, “not because he was a bad guy, but because he was a stranger.”
Potila was quick to say if her two children had been home that night, she never would have made the offer.
On the way to her house with Triplett early Tuesday evening, Potila said she stopped in at The Dollar Store to purchase some snacks for his trip home and another stop at a local gas station to buy enough fuel to allow him to run the van’s heater during the night.
During the interview earlier that day, Potila said, Triplett had indicated he loved to read, so she also gave him some books, magazines and a newspaper along with some blankets and a pillow.
Potila said she then went inside, locked up her house and started to do some work on her computer.
Not long after, she said she heard a car horn honking and thought it might be Triplett trying to signal her, so she looked out the window and saw an empty spot in her driveway where the van was supposed to be.
“I can’t even begin to describe how weird that was,” she said. “It was like my eyes were playing tricks on me.”
She said she immediately called the police to report the van stolen.
“You know, right before this happened I was uploading a photo of [Triplett and Boucher] for the homeless story,” Potila said. “It was supposed to be a ‘feel-good, people are not so bad’ story, [and] then he steals my van.”
In fact, Potila had been so inspired to help Triplett, she also gave him $10 along with the snacks for his 24-hour bus trip to Philadelphia.
Triplett got as far as Indian Township, where he and the van were spotted by Patrolman Christopher Francis of the Passamaquoddy Police Department speeding on Route 1 about 11 p.m. Tuesday night, according to Boucher.
“He was very cooperative with the officer,” Passamaquoddy Police Chief Alexander Nicholas said Wednesday morning. “And I can tell you this, he just kept saying he needed to go home and that he wanted to get home to his family.”
After learning from Boucher that Triplett had in his possession bus tickets and money to get him to Philadelphia, Nicholas said he was stumped.
“I asked him, ‘What were you thinking?’” Nicholas said. “He just kept telling me he wanted to get home and had nothing else to say.”
Triplett was taken to the Washington County Jail where he remained Wednesday charged with theft by unauthorized taking and transfer.
As of Wednesday afternoon, it was unclear if he’d be spending Thanksgiving behind bars.
Calls to the Washington County district attorney were referred to the Hancock County district attorney who did not immediately return a call on Wednesday.
“We are really hoping he can still make it home for Thanksgiving,” said Triplett’s eldest sister who lives in Philadelphia. “Right now things are very uncertain and we are waiting to hear back on what is going on in Maine.”
Roundtree described her younger brother as “a studious guy” who had been an A student at his performing arts high school and who had earned a partial scholarship to a college in Missouri.
He ended up in Fort Kent, she said, because he’d wanted to go to Canada as part of a months-long backpacking adventure.
“He was taking some time to find himself,” Roundtree said, adding she was very surprised when she’d learned about his being stopped in an allegedly stolen van. “He’s never done anything like that before, [and] he is not dangerous at all.”
Roundtree said she was happy to send him the money to get home.
“If I could talk to him right now I’d tell him to keep his head up and that we are still making preparations to have him come home,” she said. “We are anxiously waiting for him to get here safe.”
The rental van, meanwhile has been towed to Lyons Towing in Calais, and Potila said she is looking at a minimum fee of $295 before it will be released to her, and she is worried those charges could increase if there is a daily storage fee.
“I don’t even know how I am going to get down there to get it,” she said. “The whole reason I had the van in the first place is my car is in the shop because I got hit a couple of weeks ago and it’s not ready yet.”
In the end, Potila said she has learned a valuable lesson about trust.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I am normally not a cynical person. I’m an optimistic person. I am a cynic today.”
Going forward she said she will still help people, but she may think twice in some cases.
“How could I not?” she said, adding there is a bit of humor in the situation.
“I had this new jar of habanero pepper salsa in the van and was really excited to have chips and salsa when I got home [but] had left it in the van,” she said. “So it’s really adding insult to injury [because] he absconded with the van and my salsa. That is just wrong.”
