A long-planned birthday getaway on South Carolina’s Edisto Beach ended with a 62-year-old Minnesota woman dead and a local bartender charged with voluntary manslaughter after an alleged push down exterior stairs outside a crowded beachside bar.
Fox News Digital reported that Joyce Tomlinson was fatally injured around 11 p.m. on Oct. 3, 2025, outside Coot’s Bar & Grill. Mary Lopez Hunt, 68, faces charges of voluntary manslaughter and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, according to Colleton County court records.
The case turns on sharply different accounts of how Tomlinson left the top of the stairs and landed on concrete below. Her childhood friend says she was shoved headfirst. Hunt has told authorities Tomlinson fell after a confrontation inside the bar. Tomlinson died a little more than three weeks later. Hunt later saw her bond revoked and returned to jail.
Ruth Peterson and Joyce Tomlinson met as young girls in Minnesota. They roller skated together, raised families, and watched their children play side by side. Even after they lived apart, they stayed close and talked for years about meeting up to mark their 60th birthdays.
In 2025, Tomlinson called to say she was coming in October. The friends checked into a rented condo on Edisto Beach. A condo employee recommended Coot’s Bar & Grill. They went.
Peterson later told Fox News Digital they sat at the bar, each had two drinks, and stood to dance when a solo performer played. The place grew crowded. They decided to leave.
About 11 p.m., Peterson headed out first to get the car. Tomlinson stayed behind to settle the tab.
Peterson said she walked down the same steps they had used to enter, then turned to see how far behind her friend was. She saw Tomlinson standing at the top.
Peterson described a brief exchange of words with another woman that she could not hear. Then, she said, the scene changed in an instant.
"Next thing I know, Joyce had turned around to head back down [the stairs], and this woman runs at her, and with both hands just pushes her, and she just sailed,"
Peterson insisted Tomlinson never touched the stairs on the way down.
"She didn't fall down the steps. She didn't roll down the steps... She didn't touch the steps."
She added that Tomlinson “went head first and landed on this concrete slab.” Peterson rushed to her friend, could not find a pulse, and saw bleeding from the mouth and ears. “I knew it was bad,” she said.
Authorities arrived and found Tomlinson lying on the pavement at the bottom of the stairs, according to a heavily redacted report referenced in the coverage. She was flown by helicopter to a hospital. She died a little more than three weeks later.
Colleton County court records show Mary Lopez Hunt, 68, was charged with voluntary manslaughter and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. Coverage described Hunt in connection with a bartender role at the scene of the alleged push.
Records also capture Hunt’s version to authorities. She said Tomlinson was belligerent and yelled at bartenders before being asked to leave. Hunt alleges Tomlinson fell down the stairs.
Hunt was released on $100,000 bond for each charge. Later, that bond was revoked and she was taken back into custody at the Colleton County Jail in Walterboro, South Carolina. It was not immediately clear why the bond was revoked.
Fox News Digital reached out to Coot’s Bar & Grill for comment and could not reach Hunt’s attorney. No public results have been released about any surveillance video, additional named witnesses, or full unredacted investigative findings beyond the points already described.
Peterson remembered her friend as meek and friendly, an “itty-bitty, tiny” woman who worked as a legal aide helping people resolve financial issues. Tomlinson was not married and left behind a son.
At the funeral, friends and family remembered her. A eulogy Peterson wrote called her “a loving mom” and “a trustworthy friend.”
On Oct. 1, 2026, just two days before the one-year mark of her friend’s death, Peterson spoke again about the loss.
"It's just been very surreal," Peterson said. "It's very hard to believe that she's gone and that somebody would do that to another person."
Voluntary manslaughter and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature are serious felony-level charges under South Carolina law. A jury or plea process will have to weigh the witness account of a two-handed push against Hunt’s claim that Tomlinson fell after being asked to leave.
Investigators will need to determine what was said in the brief exchange Peterson saw but could not hear, whether any other patrons or staff saw the moment on the stairs, and what physical or video evidence exists beyond the redacted report. Authorities have not publicly detailed the full contents of that report.
The reason for the bond revocation also remains unclear in public records described so far. Hunt’s return to the Colleton County Jail means she is in custody as the case moves forward, but the precise procedural trigger has not been stated.
Peterson’s account places Tomlinson at the top of the stairs after settling a tab, turning to head back down, and then being driven off the landing without touching the steps. Hunt’s account to authorities frames Tomlinson as the aggressor inside the bar who later fell. Those two stories cannot both be fully true. The charging documents put the dispute into a criminal courtroom.
Edisto Beach draws visitors for quiet coastal trips and birthday weekends. A concrete slab at the bottom of bar stairs is not where a 62-year-old legal aide from Minnesota expected her celebration to end. The death of a guest after an alleged shove raises basic public-safety questions about how conflicts are handled at closing time and how quickly a disputed fall becomes a homicide investigation.
Court records, a witness who says she watched her best friend of 50 years sail headfirst onto pavement, and a defendant who says the woman fell after yelling at staff now sit before the Colleton County system. Bond was first set high, then taken away. The “why” of that revocation has not been explained publicly.
Peterson left the bar to fetch a car and turned around in time to see the end of a friendship that began on Minnesota roller skates. She has described a push with both hands, a body that never touched the steps, and a concrete landing she immediately knew was catastrophic. Hunt faces the charges that followed. The law will have to sort the rest.
When a night out ends with a body on the pavement and competing stories about a fall versus a shove, the public has a right to a clear accounting. Courts exist to test evidence, not to leave a fatal stairs case in a fog of redactions and unanswered bond questions.
