TUNBRIDGE — The 21-year-old woman who police characterized as a hostage in a fatal police shooting earlier this month said she was acting as a willing shield when she emerged from the home in front of her boyfriend following a lengthy standoff in Tunbridge.
Calen Vaine said she walked out of the home at 920 Gage Road on May 11 with Jeremy Potwin, 39, their bodies flush against one another, and walked toward his truck in an attempt to leave the scene. Potwin had a handgun in each hand, one pointed at Vaine’s head and one pointed at police, she said.
“I think he kind of knew we weren’t going to get away,” Vaine said in an interview on the Gage Road property on Thursday
But the pair, who had been using drugs throughout the standoff, tried because Potwin, who has a criminal record and was wanted by police, told her he wasn’t going to prison, she said.
They made it roughly 30 feet into the driveway before Vaine recalled hearing someone say “shot.” Potwin dropped to the ground. Potwin then fired a shot into the air, and police responded with a second shot, she said.
“It was basically a ‘suicide-by-cops’ kind of thing,” she said.
Vermont State Police haven’t publicly identified the woman they called a hostage in a news release about the shooting, but Vaine said it was her and that she wasn’t being held against her will.
After Potwin had been shot, troopers put his body on a “piece of plastic” that they found in the yard and “dragged him” down the steep driveway to an awaiting ambulance, where emergency responders tried to resuscitate him, said Vaine, who was not injured.
Police placed Vaine in the back of a cruiser. She ultimately was taken to Gifford Medical Center and then to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. She is almost eight-months pregnant and ingested a large quantity of methamphetamine shortly after after the shooting, she said.
Vaine’s account corresponds, for the most part, with the information Vermont State Police have provided about the shooting, although the agency said an armed Potwin came out of the home “holding a woman hostage.” When he pointed one of the handguns at police, two troopers fired their weapons, killing him, police said. Potwin had been the subject of an intensive manhunt in recent days.
Asked about Vaine’s account, State Police responded generally.
“Although the Vermont State Police is unable to comment further in great detail while the investigation into this incident remains open and active, the facts and evidence previously disclosed to the public provide a transparent, thorough and accurate account of what unfolded,” Vermont State Police Spokesman Adam Silverman said on Thursday.
Throughout the ordeal, Vaine said, she never felt threatened by Potwin. She said she started dating Potwin, who was married, in February.
“I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me,” Vaine said.
Vaine said she and Potwin had spent more than eight hours “barricaded” in her bedroom inside the home where she lived with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend before the shooting unfolded around 8 p.m.
They hung out and took drugs — meth and crack cocaine — and Potwin called his family members and told them he loved them, Vaine said.
Police had arrest warrants out for Potwin for violating his conditions of release and escape from Probation & Parole. He also was wanted for questioning in a car chase, an assault and kidnapping in Braintree, Vt., and three arsons in Tunbridge, including a fire that destroyed a neighboring vacant home and garage on Gage Road on April 23.
Potwin also was a suspect, police said previously, in a fire on Kelsey Mountain Road on Sonja and Mark Barter’s property on April 25. Potwin lived at 896 Gage Hill.
During the standoff, a State Police negotiator tried to get Potwin to surrender before the shooting, but he “wasn’t going to turn himself in,” Vaine said.
Police also tried other tactics; Vaine recalled police shooting out the windows of the home and a green powder being emitted.
Although he declined to comment on specifics in the case, Silverman said a tactic police use to either encourage a suspect to maintain contact with law enforcement or to figure out if someone is inside a location is to shoot “baton rounds” to break windows. They can be coated in a colored powder to mark the location. Several of the windows were boarded up on Thursday.
Silverman also said another State Police protocol is to move “an injured individual away from the scene in order to provide rapid life-saving aid while also allowing troopers to secure the location, ensuring it is safe.”
Vaine, who grew up in the Royalton area and graduated from South Royalton High School in 2015, said she and police haven’t connected for an interview.
Potwin didn’t start any of the suspicious fires in Tunbridge, and neither did she, Vaine said.
Vaine acknowledged she has a criminal record herself, including reckless endangerment and driving under the influence. She also has at least two pending cases, including a simple assault and disorderly conduct case in Orange County, from an incident in December. State Police said in a news release at the time that Vaine had assaulted two people, including Sonja Barter, on Kelsey Mountain Road.
Vaine, who has pleaded not guilty in the assault case, also said that Potwin isn’t the “monster that the cops are trying to” make him out to be.
“He was friendly. He was always happy and always smiling,” Vaine said. “He would do anything for any person.”
Potwin’s record includes convictions for negligent operation, leaving the scene of an accident and driving with a suspended license for a crash that killed James Arbuckle, his childhood friend. He didn’t serve any time in jail for that, but if he had been found guilty of a probation violation, he could have served up to eight years, Windsor County State’s Attorney David Cahill said on Thursday.
Vaine said she has stopped using hard drugs. Her life and her unborn child’s life were in jeopardy and “that was enough to make me stop,” she said.
It hasn’t been easy to quit though; she has been offered programming but hasn’t accepted the help. She finds it hard to leave the house since the shooting, she said.
Vaine, who is expecting a boy, said Potwin wasn’t the father but that she planned to give the baby the middle name of Jeremy.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.