A 28-year-old woman held at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility died over the weekend after being transferred to the hospital, according to the Department of Corrections.
Vermont State Police, the Department of Corrections and the Defender General’s Prisoners’ Rights Office will all review the death, a standard procedure when an incarcerated person dies.
Alexis Poulin, also known as Alexis Lesage, was sent to the University of Vermont Medical Center last Wednesday after experiencing a “medical event” at the prison, state police said in a press release.
Poulin’s condition worsened and she died Saturday night at the hospital, according to police. The Department of Corrections declined to release any additional information about Poulin’s medical situation, citing federal privacy laws.
State police say Poulin’s death does not appear suspicious. The medical examiner’s office will conduct an autopsy to determine a cause and manner of death.
Poulin, who’d been incarcerated since December 2022, was serving seven to 15 years in prison, all suspended except for five years, after she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. She’d initially been charged with attempted second degree murder for allegedly stabbing a man at a boat launch in St. Albans in 2020, according to court records.
Poulin had been out of prison on bail before she pleaded guilty and during that time she’d maintained consistent employment, including starting a cleaning business with her mother, her public defender wrote in a sentencing memo filed with the court.
Poulin also was receiving therapy and substance abuse treatment and had tapered herself off of prescription suboxone, a drug used to treat opioid addiction, her attorney wrote.
Poulin is the first incarcerated person to die this year in Vermont. Last year, nine people died in Vermont prisons, according to the Department of Corrections.
