The owner of a midcoast campground where paddleboarder Sunshine Stewart was bludgeoned to death last year is urging campers to “put a light/candle out on your dock” in Stewart’s memory.
Katharine Lunt, who runs Mic Mac Campground in Union, posted the memorial on the Crawford Lake Association’s homepage on Facebook.
Stewart, 48, died from a homicide by strangulation and blunt force trauma on a small island in the lake on July 3, 2025, police said.
After a weeks-long investigation, cops arrested ex-mental patient Deven Young of Frankfort in connection with her murder.
Young, 17, was staying at the campground with his family at the time he suggested to investigators he might be helpful tracking down her killer.
They became suspicious when he led them to an area of the property different from where her lifeless body had been discovered.
Young has been held in state custody since his arrest as prosecutors work to persuade a judge to charge him as an adult.
If convicted as an adult Young, now 18, could face life in prison as opposed to juvenile detention only until he is age 21.
Stewart, who lived in St. George just east of Union, had left the cove, where she had been planning to spend the summer, on her paddleboard the evening of July 2, 2025.
When she had not returned by midnight, a search began and her body was found on the island early the following morning.
Young’s trial is pending, a judge having recently ruled he is mentally competent to answer to the criminal charge.
“Light up the lake for Sunny,” Lunt posted on the one-year anniversary of her tragic killing.
