Crawford Pond is the kind of place Mainers mean when they talk about why they live there: a quiet lake in the small midcoast town of Union, ringed by camps and a family campground, with an undeveloped island in the middle that locals treat as a swimming stop. On the evening of July 2, 2025, Sunshine “Sunny” Stewart pushed off from the Mic Mac Campground shoreline on her paddleboard, the way she had countless times before. She was 48, strong, capable on the water in a way few people ever get, and she was paddling a pond she knew well on the first warm stretch of summer.

She never came back. What happened to her on 100 Acre Island that night became one of the most unsettling murder cases in recent Maine history, not because of who was accused, but because of how little sense it made: a 17-year-old stranger, a victim chosen seemingly at random, and a community that had never locked its doors suddenly learning it maybe should have. If you are new to the case, this guide covers all of it: who Sunny Stewart was, what happened on the pond, the two-week investigation, and the accused teenager whose troubled history only became public because a small newspaper went to court. If you have followed the case from the start, the later sections walk through the legal fight that now defines it, the question of whether Deven Young will be tried as an adult, and where everything stands in August 2026. It starts, as it should, with her.

Who Was Sunshine Stewart?

Sunshine Stewart was the rare person whose name actually fit her. Friends called her Sunny, and the descriptions that poured out after her death repeat the same themes: a force of nature, the glue of her friend group, the most capable person on any boat she stepped onto.

Her life reads like an adventure novel. She studied marine biology, then spent years in St. John in the US Virgin Islands, where she lived on a sailboat and worked as a boat captain and bartender. She hauled traps as a lobsterwoman. When she settled back home in Tenants Harbor, Maine, she built a career as a contractor specializing in carpentry and finish work, and she made a point of mentoring other women trying to break into the trades. In the summers she stayed seasonally at the Mic Mac Campground on Crawford Pond, where the water was her backyard.

When mourners gathered to celebrate her life in August 2025, they came from the Virgin Islands, California, New York, and Massachusetts. One friend told reporters she wanted the world to remember Sunny “as the force of nature that she was.” Another said she instilled a confidence in people that they had never felt before. That is who was on the paddleboard.

What Happened at Crawford Pond?

Sunshine Stewart was murdered while paddleboarding on Crawford Pond on the night of July 2, 2025. She left the Mic Mac Campground around 6 p.m. for an evening paddle. When she had not returned by late that night, her worried friend began searching the waterfront by flashlight, and the campground’s owner, Kathy Lunt, called police just before midnight after seeing the search on her security cameras.

The overnight search ended quickly and terribly. Around 1 a.m. on July 3, searchers using an aerial drone found Stewart’s body along the southeast shore of 100 Acre Island, the undeveloped nature preserve in the middle of the pond, roughly nine hours after she had set out. Her paddleboard was recovered nearby.

An autopsy at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta that same day determined she died of strangulation and blunt force trauma, and her death was ruled a homicide. Maine State Police initially withheld the cause while the investigation ran, confirming it publicly about a week later. The details told investigators something important immediately: this was not a drowning, not a fall, not an accident on the water. Someone had attacked her on or near that island and left her there.

The Investigation and the Two Weeks of Fear

For two weeks, the murder of Sunshine Stewart was an open question mark hanging over Knox County, and the fear in the community was specific: whoever did this was still out there, and nobody knew why it had happened. Trips to the pond stopped. Parents kept kids off the water. In a town where a stolen kayak would make the police log, the idea of a killer on Crawford Pond did not compute.

Maine State Police worked the case hard and quietly. Detectives canvassed the campground and the camps around the pond, asked the public for any sighting of Stewart near 100 Acre Island between 6 and 9 p.m. that evening, and collected DNA samples from people who had been in the area, a move that later reporting suggested was central to the break in the case.

On Wednesday, July 16, 2025, around 10:30 p.m., state police arrested a 17-year-old boy in Union without incident. The announcement went out the next day, and it answered the question of who while somehow making everything else harder to understand. The suspect was not a drifter, not someone with a grudge against Stewart, not anyone on any list. He was a kid staying at the same campground with his family.

Who Is Deven Young?

Deven Young was 17 when he was arrested and charged with Stewart’s murder, a Frankfort, Maine teenager who was camping at Mic Mac with his parents when she was killed. He turned 18 that September in custody, and he has been held at the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland since his arrest. In juvenile court he entered a denial, the juvenile equivalent of a not-guilty plea, and he is presumed innocent.

There was no known connection between him and Stewart beyond the campground they were both staying at, and police have never released a motive. The campground’s owner described him as acting “totally normal” in the days after the killing, and days after the murder he reportedly posted on Facebook that he was doing well. The district attorney for the region put words to what everyone was thinking when she said he “was not on anyone’s radar.”

That last part turned out to be more complicated. As unsealed records would later show, Deven Young had been on somebody’s radar for years. Just not the criminal justice system’s.

What the Police Records Revealed

The public only knows about Deven Young’s history because the Midcoast Villager, a small local newspaper, fought for it. After the state denied its records request, the paper went to court, and in mid-January 2026 a judge ordered records unsealed that showed a long-troubled home life and prior violent behavior.

The most striking material was audio from a January 2023 Waldo County Sheriff’s Office visit to the family’s Frankfort home, recorded after then-15-year-old Deven showed up to school with a black eye and told a teacher his father had hit him during a dispute over yard work. On the recordings, his own family describes a boy with a bipolar disorder diagnosis who had spent time at Acadia Hospital, who would attack his mother, and who had been on a waitlist for in-home behavioral services for three years. His stepmother’s description was as raw as it gets: the sweetest, nicest kid you will ever meet, and then, in her words, like a crazy little psycho. The records also documented a March 2015 domestic-violence incident in which his father fired birdshot into a wall behind Deven’s mother, ending in a guilty plea to reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon.

District Attorney Natasha Irving, whose district covers Knox County, drew the systemic conclusion herself, saying that if the boy had not spent years on a waitlist for services that barely exist in Maine, the killing potentially could have been prevented. It is the part of this case that haunts people beyond the crime itself: the warning signs were documented, in official records, years before anyone died. The Boston Globe’s investigation into the case traced that paper trail in detail and turned a local murder case into a statewide reckoning over youth mental health.

Will Deven Young Be Tried as an Adult?

This is the question the entire case now turns on, and as of August 2026 it has not been answered. Maine prosecutors moved within weeks of the arrest to “bind over” Young to adult court, but the decision belongs to a judge, and the process has moved at the speed Maine’s courts move.

The difference between the two tracks is enormous, and it is worth being precise about. If Young stays in juvenile court and is found responsible, Maine law caps any commitment at his 21st birthday. He would walk out of Long Creek at 21 no matter what, because the juvenile system is built around rehabilitation rather than punishment. If he is bound over and convicted of murder as an adult, the sentence under Maine’s murder statute, Title 17-A section 1603, is life or any term of not less than 25 years, and Maine has no parole. Same accusation, same facts: either release at 21 or a minimum of a quarter century.

The bind-over decision follows what we call the Juvenile Court Roadmap: competency first, then records discovery, then the bind-over hearing, then trial. Knowing the sequence makes the slow headlines legible. First came competency: on April 29, 2026, Judge Eric Walker ruled Young competent to stand trial after an impounded evaluation. Then discovery for the bind-over fight: in May the state won access to his health and social-services records. At a July 14, 2026 scheduling hearing, the court set the final pieces in motion, with a state forensic report due in late July and a status hearing in early August to schedule the bind-over hearing itself, now expected in August or September 2026. At that hearing the judge will weigh factors like the seriousness of the crime, his record and treatment history, and whether the juvenile system can plausibly rehabilitate him by 21. Only after that ruling does the case head toward an actual trial, in whichever court wins.

Public Perception and the Justice for Sunny Movement

Union and the surrounding towns did not process this case quietly. Yellow became the case’s color, and supporters in yellow shirts holding “Justice for Sunny” signs have stood outside the Knox County courthouse at Young’s hearings. The Mic Mac Market put a memorial on its door, a paddleboarder silhouetted against a sunset. The community’s grief organized itself with the same energy Sunny was known for.

The remembrances have been on the water, where they belong. On August 8, 2025, what would have been her 49th birthday, friends held a Paddle for Sunny on Crawford Pond. Two days later, hundreds gathered in St. George for her celebration of life. A memorial plaque now sits on 100 Acre Island, and in July 2026 the campground held a one-year remembrance. The case has drawn national true-crime attention too, from network coverage to the Globe’s long investigation, and it resonates with the same nerve struck by cases like the murder of Grace Millane, where a place that was supposed to be safe turned out not to be, and a community had to reckon with what that meant.

The other public conversation is harder and still unresolved: the records showing years of documented warning signs have made the case a flashpoint over Maine’s youth mental health system, juvenile-records secrecy, and what communities are owed when the warnings were all there in writing.

Sunshine Stewart’s Legacy

Sunny Stewart’s legacy runs through the people she taught, hired, and pushed to be braver. The women she mentored in the trades tell stories about her handing them tools and expecting them to figure it out, then showing them how when they could not. Friends from three decades and two coastlines describe the same person: someone who made you more capable just by standing next to her.

Her death also left a practical mark on how people in midcoast Maine think about safety in places that never required thinking about it. That is a loss with no upside, but the community has insisted on pairing it with her name and her energy rather than her killer’s, from the paddle events to the plaque on the island. The most likely long-term legacy is the least visible one: if Maine ever fixes the years-long waitlists for youth behavioral services that this case dragged into the light, the change will trace back in part to what happened on Crawford Pond.

What Is the Latest in 2026?

As of early August 2026, the case sits at its hinge point. Young has been ruled competent, the state’s forensic report on him was due at the end of July, and the court is expected to hold a status hearing in the first days of August to set the date for the bind-over hearing, now anticipated in August or September. No trial date exists yet in either system, and no bind-over ruling has been made.

Stewart’s family and friends have been open about what the wait costs. A year past the murder, they told reporters they are still waiting for justice in a process where every hearing seems to schedule another hearing. The one-year mark came and went in July with the case still in juvenile court, Maine State Police’s original release identifying her still the founding document of the file, and the central question, which courtroom this case will even be tried in, still open. Expect that answer within weeks, and expect it to change everything about the case’s timeline either way.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to Sunshine Stewart?
Sunshine “Sunny” Stewart, 48, of Tenants Harbor, Maine, was murdered on the night of July 2, 2025 while paddleboarding on Crawford Pond in Union. Her body was found early on July 3 on the shore of 100 Acre Island. She died of strangulation and blunt force trauma.

Who was arrested for Sunshine Stewart’s murder?
Deven Young, a 17-year-old from Frankfort, Maine who was camping at the same campground with his family, was arrested on July 16, 2025 and charged with murder. He has entered a denial, the juvenile equivalent of a not-guilty plea, and is presumed innocent.

How did Sunshine Stewart die?
The Maine Chief Medical Examiner determined she died of strangulation and blunt force trauma, and her death was ruled a homicide.

Was there any connection between Sunshine Stewart and Deven Young?
None has ever been reported beyond both staying at the Mic Mac Campground, she seasonally and he on a family camping trip. Police have never released a motive.

Will Deven Young be tried as an adult?
Undecided. Prosecutors are seeking to move his case to adult court, and a bind-over hearing is expected in August or September 2026. In juvenile court a commitment ends at age 21; an adult murder conviction in Maine carries 25 years to life with no parole.

Where is Deven Young now?
He is held at the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, where he has been since his arrest in July 2025.

More True Crime From Slaycation

A murder on quiet water, with no motive anyone can name, is its own category of frightening, and it is one Slaycation has covered before. Listen to our episode on Angelika Graswald and Vincent Viafore, the Hudson River kayaking death where the water itself became the weapon, and explore the full episode archive for more cases where a perfect day outdoors turned into a case file. Subscribe to the Slaycation podcast for new episodes, and we will keep following the Stewart case as the bind-over decision lands.

References

• Boston Globe, “Sunny Stewart killing: What happened on a quiet Maine pond?” (March 12, 2026)
• Maine State Police / Maine.gov, Sunshine Stewart investigation releases (July 2025)
• Press Herald, “Unsealed records show violent history of teen accused of killing Maine paddleboarder” (January 15, 2026)
• Bangor Daily News, midcoast courts coverage of the Deven Young case (2025 to 2026)
• PenBay Pilot, Knox County court news, July 14, 2026 scheduling hearing (July 19, 2026)
• CBS News and AP, coverage of the July 2025 investigation and arrest
• Maine Revised Statutes, Title 17-A section 1603 and the Maine Juvenile Code
• WGME and WABI, one-year case status coverage (July 2026)