A 17-year-old has been charged with murder in the death of a woman who disappeared this month while paddle boarding near a remote island in Maine, according to the Maine attorney general’s office.
The authorities identified the suspect on Friday as Deven Young, of Frankfort, Maine. A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said it was seeking to try Mr. Young, who will turn 18 on Sept. 24, as an adult.
His arrest in the killing of Sunshine Stewart, 48, who the authorities said died from strangulation and blunt force trauma, was announced on Thursday by the Maine State Police, who did not name him or say whether he had been charged.
The police said on Thursday that they were continuing to investigate Ms. Stewart’s killing and asked for the public’s help. A motive for the killing remained unclear on Friday, and investigators did not release further details about the circumstances.
Mr. Young made his initial court appearance on Friday in Knox County, The Midcoast Villager reported. He is being held at the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, and his next court appearance is Aug. 22.
Jeremy Pratt, a lawyer for Mr. Young, declined to comment on Friday.
A state game warden found Ms. Stewart’s body around 1 a.m. on July 3 near 100 Acre Island, a nature preserve on Crawford Pond in Union, Maine, that is accessible only by water, the authorities said.
Ms. Stewart was believed to have been paddle boarding between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. the previous evening, according to the authorities. She lived in Tenants Harbor, Maine, which is roughly 20 miles south of the pond, along the Atlantic coast.
Ms. Stewart grew up in Union, not far from where she was killed, and spent much of her life working on boats, according to Annie Haven, a longtime friend who met her at Bradford College in Massachusetts. She said that Ms. Stewart, who was known as Sunny, received her bachelor’s degree in environmental science in 1999 before the college closed. The pair instantly bonded, Ms. Haven said, one being from Maine and the other from Cape Cod.
In college, Ms. Haven said, Ms. Stewart once brought a pumpkin the size of a boulder back to campus for Halloween that they used to make pumpkin pies that fed more than 100 people.
“She’s just a really salt-of-the-earth person,” Ms. Haven said. “She was a helper.”
In Tenants Harbor, Ms. Stewart had painstakingly restored her house from an empty frame, which did not have windows, doors or shingles, into a charming cottage with a decorative slate roof, Ms. Haven said.
“She could have been her own HGTV show,” she said.
Ms. Haven described Ms. Stewart as being in her element on the water, having worked as a steersman on a lobster boat and having once sailed from Maine to the Virgin Islands during a hurricane. She went paddle boarding regularly and had invited friends to join her for a summer getaway on the pond when she was killed.
“She was telling me about the campground and how she had set up the campsite,” Ms. Haven said.
Ms. Stewart’s sister and her two nephews were supposed to join her at the campsite on July 4, Ms. Haven said.
“It’s completely unfair,” she said.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter for The Times focused on transportation. He is based in Washington.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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