Inset, left to right: Deven Young (Facebook/Law&Crime/YouTube), Sunshine Stewart (Stewart family). Background: Crawford Pond in Union, Maine, is seen Wednesday, July 9, 2025 (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty).
The teenager in Maine who authorities say killed a paddleboarder on a remote pond before trying to point investigators in the wrong direction will be tried as an adult, according to reports.
Deven Young, now 19, was 17 when 48-year-old Sunshine “Sunny” Stewart died. He is charged with her murder, and during a status conference in Knox County Superior Court on Friday, a judge confirmed that Young will be tried as an adult after he waived his opportunity for a bind-over hearing, in which the court would have heard evidence in the case and made a ruling, according to regional ABC affiliate WMTW.
The update is a win for the Maine Attorney General’s Office, as prosecutors expressed early on in the case their desire to try Young as an adult.
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On July 2, 2025, Stewart was staying at Mic Mac Cove Campground in Union, Maine. Young was on a family vacation on the same land at the time, as Law&Crime previously reported.
That evening, Stewart went paddleboarding on nearby Crawford Pond. She did not return.
She was reported missing, and responding authorities found her body on an island at the center of the pond. They ruled her death a homicide, and her cause of death was determined to be strangulation and blunt force trauma, Maine State Police said in a press release at the time.
For nearly two weeks after Stewart’s body was found, investigators searched for clues. According to Katharine Lunt, the owner of the campground, Young inserted himself into the case as he “volunteered” to help investigators.
“He said he had some information,” Lunt told the area TV station, “and he took them in the opposite direction of where Sunny was found.”
Police believe that on the evening Stewart disappeared, the defendant took his small fishing boat out onto the pond less than an hour before she went paddleboarding. Authorities suspected their killer was in the area, given that the land was largely private and rural, but, as Lunt described, “[n]obody was looking for a child.”
She added: “The fact that this individual was in this campground for two weeks is haunting. … He was not on anyone’s radar. That whole week, he was offering campers help with different tasks they were doing. He acted like nothing ever happened.”
Young being tried as an adult is significant because — as Law&Crime’s “On the Case” with Chris Stewart explained — if he was charged as a juvenile, he would likely have been released from custody at age 21. However, under state law, if he is convicted of murder as an adult, he will face 25 years to life in prison.
According to WMTW, Young will be held without bail at the Knox County Jail. The case will go before a grand jury, with another status conference scheduled for January.
The post Teen who allegedly killed paddleboarder and then ‘volunteered’ to help investigators while misleading them will be tried as an adult first appeared on Law & Crime.
