Maine police charged a teen boy with the murder of a paddleboarder who had led the authorities on a “wild goose chase” after he had volunteered to help police search for the killer. This search went on for two weeks before they arrested him for the death of Sunshine “Sunny” Stewart, according to the New York Post.
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Maine Teen Led Authorities On Wild Goose Chase Before Accused Of Paddleboarder Murder
The 48-year-old woman went missing while paddleboarding alone on July 2. This was at the 600-acre Crawford Pond at Mic Mac Cove Campground. A day later, her body was found under “unusual circumstances” on one of the islands on this pond around 1 AM. The medical examiner found her bludgeoned and strangled to death.
For the following two weeks, officials deemed her death a homicide but couldn’t find any leads on her killer. The authorities scouted the entire campground and surrounding areas for any clues.
Police would’ve never initially guessed that 17-year-old Devon Young, who eagerly helped with the manhunt, was the culprit. Young was vacationing at the campground with his parents during the incident.
“I was looking for a stranger, somebody out of the ordinary,” said campground owner Katharine Lunt to ABC News. “Absolutely nobody was looking for a child. We were looking for an adult.”
Not knowing who was behind the murder of the paddleboarder made the hunt tense for everybody involved. Lunt described feeling “obsessed” over wanting to find the killer, as no one knew if they would kill a second time.
How Police Caught Teen Who Led Them Astray During Manhunt
Lunt explained how Young claimed to have some information on the case. Instead, he led the authorities astray. “He volunteered, he said he had some information, and he took them in the opposite direction of where Sunny was found,” said Lunt.
“He had said he had something to show them, and took them out on the lake on pretty much a wild goose chase.”
The campground owner recalled Young “acting totally normal” for those two difficult weeks. “He acted like nothing ever happened,” she said while shaking her head. “It’s haunting. He was not on anybody’s radar.”
Lunt believes Young may have said something that made investigators suspicious. They decided to probe him for a few more hours, and they found what they needed. Police eventually arrested Young during the evening of July 16.
Lunt didn’t want to believe it, so she checked for proof. “Just thinking, no way, this cannot be happening,” she said. “Then I went back to surveillance cameras to see where he was at the time [of the killing] — and those surveillance videos indicated he was on the lake at the time.”
Young had returned to land before it got dark the night of the paddleboarder’s death. Lunt believes that Stewart was “at the wrong place at the wrong time” since she didn’t remember the two ever crossing paths before.
The teenager is currently in custody at a juvenile detention facility. Although state prosecutors pushed to charge him as an adult, the request has yet to be ruled on.
Young denied the charge after making his first court appearance on Friday, July 18. His next hearing was scheduled for August 22.