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Leah Hanzas, right, service coordinator with Listen Community Services, gives resources to Mylin Paul, during a monthly free health clinic, at which all are welcome, at the emergency winter shelter in Lebanon, N.H., on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. They were trying to connect Paul, who has had no housing since his recent release from the Grafton County Department of Corrections, with transitional housing and a mobile phone. The pop-up clinic, a collaboration between Lebanon Mobile Integrated Health, Community Nurse Connection, Listen, and Upper Valley Haven, saw 45 visitors over its three hours – the highest number since it began a year ago. In addition to immediate needs like wound care, medication management, HIV and hepatitis C testing, visitors can get help finding a primary care provider, take a shower, get a haircut and receive camping supplies. (Valley News – James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. -
Tiffany Wyman, photographed in White River Junction, Vt., on Friday, July 18, 2025, knew Mylin Paul, who was found dead in White River Junction, Vt., on Wednesday. Wyman, who struggles with addiction, said she had never known Paul to use opiates, and that after his recent release from jail he looked healthy and was eager to re-start his life. (Valley News – James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. -
Chris Flye, photographed in White River Junction, Vt,. on Thursday, July 18, 2025, reconnected this week with Mylin Paul, who he met earlier this year while they were both serving time in Grafton County Department of Corrections, and gave him a place to stay for a couple days this week, he said. Flye woke up one morning to Paul having cleaned his apartment. “It was kind of a mess when I went to sleep – I woke up, and it was immaculate, so, yeah, he was definitely a great guest. He was a good guy,” said Flye. Out of concern for repercussions from his landlord, Flye asked Paul to leave on Tuesday night. He was found dead the following morning near an encampment in White River Junction, Vt. “I felt bad., you know, I, don’t want anybody to have to sleep on the street, and I’ll help out when I can, but unfortunately, I have to also look out for myself as well.” (Valley News – James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A 28-year-old father who had been experiencing homelessness died outdoors in White River Junction last week.
Mylin Paul is the second homeless man to die in White River Junction this month.
Hartford police responded to a call from a woman who had found Paul’s body in the wooded area behind 54 Bridge St., near Main Street Museum at 8 a.m. last Wednesday, July 16.
“He was a good dad,” Tiffany Wyman, a friend of Paul’s and member of the unhoused community in White River Junction, said Friday. “He talked about his children all the time.”
Paul had at least one child, a 6-year-old daughter, according to a 2019 birth announcement in the Valley News.
Paul’s death came less than two weeks after police found 32-year-old Christopher Lane’s body in a tent on Credit Court, a side street off of Maple Street, on July 5.
Paul was released from the Grafton County Department of Corrections in North Haverhill less than two weeks before his death, wrote Superintendent Tim Lethbridge in an email Monday. Paul had served six months for criminal threatening with a firearm, according to court documents.
The Grafton County Department of Corrections, “did arrange for transitional sober living housing on his release and also arranged for transportation from the House of Correction to the sober living facility,” Lethbridge said. Lethbridge declined to provide the name of the sober living facility and did not know how long Paul stayed there.
On July 15, the day before his body was found, Paul went to the monthly free health clinic hosted by Lebanon Mobile Integrated Health, Community Nurse Connection, Listen, and Upper Valley Haven at the emergency winter shelter on Mechanic Street in Lebanon. Paul was looking for connections to housing and a mobile phone.
“I met Mylin for the very first time Tuesday,” said Roscoe Putnam, a coordinator at the health clinic and independent contractor with the Center for Advancing Rural Health Equity. “He told us he was recently experiencing housing insecurity.”
Putnam described Paul as “very outgoing and very engaging.”
In the week before his death, Paul stayed a few nights with Hallie Fortune Tinker in her trailer at the mobile home park on Sykes Mountain Avenue.
“He was very respectful and very helpful,” Fortune Tinker said. “He was always cleaning the kitchen and doing dishes.”
Fortune Tinker had known Paul for less than two weeks. She met him when a friend brought him to a gathering at her home and he ended up staying. She had been trying to connect him to resources that could help him get in contact with his daughter again. “His little girl meant a lot to him,” Fortune Tinker said.
For his part, Lane had been living in the Shady Lawn Motel through Vermont’s voucher program that provided emergency shelter for eligible homeless people in hotels and motels.
On July 1, Lane was among 30 households at the Shady Lawn who lost their vouchers after state lawmakers decided to stop funding the program.
Lane’s autopsy results are pending.
The cause of Paul’s death also has yet to be determined and the police investigation is ongoing.
“He did not appear to be stabbed or shot,” Hartford Police officer Will Furnari said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Those close to Paul suspect it was an overdose.
“Like a lot of us, he struggled with addiction,” Wyman said while eating lunch at the Listen dining hall in White River Junction.
Wyman, 35, had known Paul since she moved to White River Junction from Enfield a year ago. She nicknamed him “Spanish” because of his Hispanic descent. “He was a good person, very sweet,” she said about Paul.
When he got out of jail, Paul looked “very good,” Wyman said. “He looked completely different.”
Wyman thinks Paul turned to drugs to ease the pain of missing his daughter.
“He came out and had no contact with his children,” Wyman said. “I know what it’s like to want to parent your children and not have that option.”
A mother of three kids ages 16, 13 and 7, Wyman sent her own children to live with relatives when she relapsed last November.
Wyman said she is addicted to cocaine. She had been sober since exiting rehab four years ago but relapsed after a relative’s parole hearing, which she said triggered memories of childhood abuse. “I found myself using to numb the bullshit,” she said.
Because overdoses in the homeless community happen “almost daily” Wyman keeps naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, a lifesaving medication to reverse opioid overdoses, on her at all times, she said.
“If someone overdoses and it’s the police we’re relying on to bring Narcan, that person’s going to die,” she said referring to the police’s response time.
Furnari did not have data on Hartford Police Department’s average response time but said, “We respond as quickly as we safely can … when you’re calling 911 for an emergency it always feels like the police aren’t responding fast enough.”
In addition to Narcan, Wyman carries strips to test drugs for fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that’s as much as 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “I test a lot of the stuff that comes around here,” Wyman said. “You should assume there’s fentanyl in them.”
Although she said she does not use intravenous drugs, she also has sterile needles for those who do, “I carry supplies for everyone,” she said. “People will pick dirty needles up off the ground. People are desperate when they want to get high or get well.”
As of Friday, Wyman planned to enter rehab again as early as this week in hopes of getting sober, finding a stable place to live and caring for her children again.
Upon request, staff at the HIV/HCV Resource Center in Lebanon drive to people on the Vermont side of the Upper Valley with a mobile drug testing lab and test their drugs for them.
Ryan Fowler, a harm reduction coordinator at the resource center said it’s “mind boggling” the amount of dangerous compounds the center has found in substances in White River Junction. “Lately it’s been remarkably dangerous,” he said. Among the most potent compounds is bis(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidyl) sebacate, or BTMPS, an industrial chemical used in manufacturing plastic materials that is not approved for human consumption. If consumed, BTMPS can lower one’s heartrate, making it easier to overdose.
Of the 350 individuals the resource center sees per year, Fowler estimates close to half are unhoused.
When it comes to overdoses, “if you’re housed, you’re a lot less likely to die,” Fowler said. “When you meet peoples’ basic survival needs they’re able to get better.”
Fowler categorized addiction as “an indicator of trauma, unmet needs and inequity.”
“People are doing the best they can with what they have,” he said. “When you start to understand why people are using drugs, harm reduction takes place.”
Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.
