Since Thursday, when authorities declared the death of a Tenants Harbor woman on or near a pond in Union to be a homicide, few answers have emerged to how 48-year-old Sunshine Stewart was killed last week.
“If you don’t like your life, change it,” read the tattoo inscribed on her shoulder, which seems to reflect the powerful sense of positive energy this Knox County woman inspired in others.
“To know her was to love her,” wrote her friend Rob Wood on Facebook, adding “She was a force to be reckoned with. Those bright beaming eyes that smile, that laugh. Oh, that laugh. Devilish sense of humor, but also a serious thinker. She liked to have fun, but she also didn’t play around when it was time to get things done.”
Another friend concurred.
“A woman who was a sister, who was the embodiment of resilience, bad ass independent and outrageous, irreverent humor – went out to paddle board and was found dead several hours later,” Sam Morris wrote.
So what happened to her?
In the early hours of July 2, Knox County first responders were called to Crawford Pond in Union to search for Stewart, who had gone paddle-boarding. Later, they requested support from the Rockland Police Department, which deployed its drone in the search.
When they found Stewart’s body, local officials then notified the Major Crimes Division of the Maine State Police because of signs her death was suspicious. Following an autopsy on July 3, authorities declared her death a homicide.
Union is a small farming town dotted with ponds to which locals and other camp owners are drown in the hot summer months. Crawford Pond has no public access, and is surrounded entirely by private property. Stewart was reportedly spending the summer at the Mic Mac Cove Campground, but management there is tight lipped.
“I’m running a tournament as you can see right now,” Kathryn, the owner of the campground, who was presiding over what appeared to be a horseshoe competition, told The Maine Wire on Sunday. “If you call me this afternoon, maybe I’ll talk to you then.”
But Kathryn didn’t respond to a follow-up call. The woman running the adjacent convenience store was similarly reticent.
“We’re not saying anything more than was already released,” she told The Maine Wire.
Authorities have asked anyone who has seen anything in the vicinity of the pond’s 100 Acre Island to come forward, in a sign the killer remains at large.
“I think she would come in here,” the clerk at the Tenants Harbor General Store told The Maine Wire on Sunday. “She was really killed? That’s awful!”
In a place where people are accustomed to being able to go paddle-boarding on a quiet pond in the late afternoon without event, the news is unsettling indeed. A well-liked woman is now dead, and folks are clamming up.
Now the the holiday weekend is over, maybe anyone who might have heard or seen anything can pick up the phone and call the Knox County Sheriff’s Office or the Maine State Police at 207-624-7076. At least two communities, and now perhaps the state as a whole not to mention Stewart’s many friends, deserve answers.
