Residents had few answers about a rare killing in the midcoast town of Union until police announced on Thursday they had arrested a 17-year-old in connection with the death of Sunshine Stewart.
Stewart, 48, had gone out paddleboarding at Crawford Pond from the Mic Mac Cove Family Campground on the evening of July 2 and never returned. Her body was found early the next morning.
Along with announcing the arrest of the unnamed teenager, Maine State Police also released Stewart’s cause of death for the first time on Thursday after initially confirming it was a homicide. She allegedly died of strangulation and blunt force trauma.
While the news has provided some relief for those who were concerned about a suspect being on the loose, it raises more questions. The 17-year-old, whose identity hasn’t been released, was taken to Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, but it’s not yet clear when he could make a court appearance, and no other details have been shared about him.
A representative of the campground, where Stewart had been staying for summer, declined an interview on Monday.
But the killing has already changed how Union residents see their small town, numerous people told the Bangor Daily News. All said they were shocked such a thing could happen there.
“I feel like Union’s lost some of its innocence, I guess,” Nancy Pike said Thursday afternoon during a shift at the Matthews Museum of Maine Heritage, which collects artifacts of local history and culture.
Now a resident of Lincolnville, she lived in Union from 1976 to 2000 and raised her children there while working at the local elementary school Stewart attended, immediately next door to the campground.
Pike knew Stewart as a student and through her friendships with Pike’s children, and remembered her fondly, she said. She hopes the arrest will bring some closure to friends and family.
Like many others, Pike never used to lock her doors at night. Now she does.
Andrew Jura, who lives a mile away from Crawford Pond, said he’s not too concerned about an ongoing threat to the public, although some neighbors are, and a viral video last week that attempted to link Stewart’s death to a serial killer “didn’t help.” Speculation about the case led state police to condemn those “irresponsible” theories.
“Everybody’s just curious to find out what happened,” Jura said.
Jura knew Stewart, too. They once lobstered from the same wharf in Tenants Harbor, where she lived and worked for many years on the water and in the trades. She was a nice woman who always had a smile on her face, even when things weren’t going her way, he said.
People in Tenants Harbor all spoke highly of Stewart last week, remembering her as hardworking, funny, upbeat and always ready to help other people.
Jura spoke to a reporter on the Union Fairgrounds, where he’s vice president and was busy preparing for opening day of the fair in a week and a half. Organizers wondered whether the killing would also limit attendance if it went unsolved, he said. Even before it happened, they had worried about keeping up participation in the town’s landmark fair.
For now, Jura is taking a wait-and-see approach to the case, noting that the police said they made the arrest “in connection” with the killing, but not necessarily naming a culprit.
Judy and George Gross, longtime fair trustees from Bristol who were repainting a sheep barn Thursday in preparation for opening day, said they had also heard people saying they might stay home because of the case.
They were glad to hear an arrest had been made and hoped that, if the teenager was involved in the crime, justice would be served.
“I hope that will put a lot of people’s minds at ease,” Judy Gross said of the arrest.
The Grosses were also shocked that a slaying could happen here. It’s something they said they might expect in a bigger city, but not in Union, which had a population of 2,383 in 2020.
Such violence isn’t totally unheard of in the area. A man who was outside the Mic Mac Store adjoining the campground on Thursday — and declined to give his name — pointed to other killings that have happened in the region in recent decades.
The town has also grown since the pandemic, he said, and even before this, the area no longer felt like rural America to him.
The man said he wasn’t concerned about his own safety in the wake of the crime, though he does worry about his daughters.
“But I’m always worried about them,” he said.
