Ten months after he was charged in the killing of Sunshine “Sunny” Stewart on a quiet pond in Maine, Deven Young, 18, appeared in open court for the first time Thursday afternoon in Rockland.
Because he was 17 at the time he was charged, Young’s case has proceeded behind closed doors in juvenile court, and most related records have been withheld from the public. But after ruling last week that Young was competent to stand trial, District Court Judge Eric Walker allowed the public to attend Thursday’s hearing.
Young, who has been held at Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, appeared from the facility remotely, answering monosyllabically a pair of questions from the judge about whether he could hear and if he’d been able to speak with his attorneys.
Authorities have alleged that Young killed Stewart, 48, after she set out paddleboarding from a Union campground on July 2. Her body was found early the next morning near an island on Crawford Pond. According to the state medical examiner, she died from strangulation and blunt force trauma.
Young has denied the charge.
Now that Walker has ruled on Young’s competency, he said Thursday that he would next address a motion from the Maine attorney general’s office to move the case to adult court. To inform that decision, Walker said he would order the state forensics department to further evaluate Young’s mental health — a process that could take six weeks, according to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Bogue.
A hearing to determine whether to transfer the case would likely take place in August or September, Walker said.
The judge also addressed the state’s request for records from Young’s high school, a psychiatric hospital that treated him, and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Though Young’s attorneys objected to sharing the records, Walker said he would review them and then determine whether to provide them to prosecutors.
He did not say whether those records would be available to the public.
Among the only records released in the case is a 2023 recording of a sheriff’s deputy interviewing Young’s parents after he showed up to school with a black eye. In the recording, first obtained by the Midcoast Villager, his mother, Tara Young, says that he had been diagnosed with a host of mental health conditions, including intermittent explosive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. The parents describe their son as a troubled young man prone to fits of rage, particularly when he didn’t take his medicine.
Young’s parents and Stewart’s sister, Kim Ware, attended Thursday’s hearing remotely. Ware displayed an image featuring the silhouette of a paddleboarder and the words “#JUSTICEFORSUNNY.”
Stewart, who was working as a contractor and living in the coastal town of Tenants Harbor at the time of her death, had planned to spend much of the summer at a campsite at Mic Mac Cove Family Campground on Crawford Pond.
“Her intention was to use it for a staycation,” Caroline Keefe, a lifelong friend, told the Globe. “Have friends and family, do cookouts, use the pond, just be in nature.”
Keefe and other friends described Stewart as a radiant person who fiercely advocated for friends, family, and women in the trades. She loved the water and had worked as a ship captain, a lobsterwoman, and a bartender on a beach in the Virgin Islands.
“Her personality was just like her name,” said Tennie Komar, a family friend. “If she zeroed in on you, she gave you a lot of attention, and she wanted to know you.”
Paul Heintz can be reached at paul.heintz@globe.com. Follow him on X @paulheintz.