UNION, Maine (WGME) — The 17-year-old Maine boy charged with murder in connection with the death of a paddleboarder in Union has been identified.<\/p>\n
According to court documents, 17-year-old Deven Young is accused of killing 48-year-old Sunshine “Sunny” Stewart of Tenants Harbor.<\/p>\n
Young was arrested on Wednesday in Union and charged with murder. He is being held at Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland.<\/p>\n
Police say Stewart’s body was found under \u201cunusual circumstances\u201d on an island on Crawford Pond around 1 a.m. on July 3 after she never returned from a solo paddleboard trip the day before. Her death was ruled a homicide.<\/p>\n
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta says her cause of death was strangulation and blunt force trauma.<\/p>\n
It is currently unclear if the suspect and victim knew each other.<\/p>\n
The owner of Mic Mac Campground, where Stewart was staying, says she was looking forward to paddleboarding all summer long.<\/p>\n
“She was just a great, great person all-around,\u201d Union resident Meredith Smith said. “To know Sunny, I don\u2019t think she had a bad bone in her body, and anyone that knew her was just in awe of her. Nobody would want to hurt Sunny. So, it\u2019s kind of scary for all of us who live local to think that somebody out there, if they can do that to her, then what could possibly happen next.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lack of information made public around her death put the small Maine town on edge.<\/p>\n
“My granddaughter\u2019s here for the summer working at the store, and we\u2019ve been worried,\u201d Union resident Debbie Wadsworth said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want her to walk home. Just not sure who it was. So, I\u2019m very happy they found him.\u201d<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s frightening. Just frightening, and I\u2019m delighted that there\u2019s been an arrest,” Union resident Susan Creighton said. “There was all kinds of rumors circulating about a New England serial killer.”<\/p>\n
The motive for Stewart’s murder has not yet been released, but families are relieved knowing they\u2019ve apprehended a suspect.<\/p>\n
“I think they did a good job in finding the person,” Union resident Peter Eckardt said.<\/p>\n
“A lot of good people in town that were upset about what happened,\u201d Union Assessor\u2019s Agent James Murphy Jr. said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m sure that they\u2019re very relieved that an arrest has been made.”<\/p>\n
The investigation is ongoing. Maine State Police say no additional information is being released at this time.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information related to this case is encouraged to contact the Maine State Police at (207) 624-7076 or by texting MESPTIP to 847411.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UNION, Maine (WGME) — The 17-year-old Maine boy charged with murder in connection with the death of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,18190,694,6270,10482,698,3,18189,16169,15557,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-19779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-deven-young","10":"tag-homicide","11":"tag-investigation","12":"tag-maine","13":"tag-murder","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-paddleboarder","16":"tag-sunshine-stewart","17":"tag-union","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}