The teenage suspect in the murder of a paddleboarder in Union last summer was on a waitlist for in-home behavioral support services. The revelation about Deven Young is contained in an audio recording released by the Waldo County Sheriff's Office this week.
In the redacted recording from January 2023, an unnamed man and woman, most likely Young's parents, tell a detective sergeant that Young has 14 different diagnoses, including bipolar disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, oppositional defiance disorder, and ADHD.
The officer responded to Young's home in Frankfort to discuss an altercation that involved Young, then 15 years old, and the unnamed man.
The man describes how when Young doesn't take his medication, he gets triggered easily and is prone to "rampages", during which he's smashed walls, taken a pickax to vehicles, and gotten in fights.
"Quickly, he goes from fine, to just boiling over," said the man in the audio interview.
The couple told the detective they've done "everything under the sun" to address Young's illness, including therapy, medications, and a day treatment program at a psychiatric hospital, but add that they've been on a waitlist for three years to get in-home behavioral health services.
The man expresses his concern that someday, Young will end up in jail.
Young was arrested two weeks after Sunshine Stewart's body was found on Crawford Pond in Union where he and his family had been vacationing. The Maine Medical Examiner's Office ruled her cause of death was strangulation and blunt force trauma.
Young, who was 17 years old at the time, was charged as a juvenile.
The audio recording, and a heavily redacted written narrative of the same encounter, were ordered to be unsealed by a judge, following a lawsuit by the Midcoast Villager.
