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A long-awaited getaway for two best friends celebrating birthdays together ended in tragedy when a bartender allegedly shoved a woman down stairs, leaving her fatally injured outside a South Carolina beachside bar.
Mary Lopez Hunt, 68, has been charged with voluntary manslaughter and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, according to Colleton County court records.
Ruth Peterson recalled the painful memory to Fox News Digital on Oct. 1, 2026, just two days before the one-year mark of her friend’s death.
Peterson had just left to get their car, as her friend, 62-year-old Minnesota resident Joyce Tomlinson, went to settle their tab at Coot’s Bar & Grill on Edisto Island at about 11 p.m. on Oct. 3, 2025.
Best friends since childhood, Joyce Tomlinson, left, and Ruth Peterson, right, enjoyed raising their families together, Peterson told Fox News Digital. (Courtesy of Ruth Peterson)
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Hearing her friend’s voice, Peterson turned at the bottom of the stairs and looked up, she said.
At the top of the stairs, she saw Tomlinson — a woman she described as meek and friendly — exchange words briefly with another woman behind her. She couldn’t hear what was said.
“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 said, stifling tears.
“She didn’t fall down the steps. She didn’t roll down the steps…She didn’t touch the steps.”
“She went head first and landed on this concrete slab.”
Peterson rushed to her friend and couldn’t find a pulse, she said. Tomlinson began bleeding from her mouth and ears, she said.
“I knew it was bad.”
Hunt told authorities that Tomlinson was belligerent and yelled at bartenders before she was asked to leave, records show. She alleges that Tomlinson fell down the stairs.
Mary Lopez Hunt has been charged with voluntary manslaughter after allegedly pushing Joyce Tomlinson down the stairs outside Coot’s Bar & Grill in Edisto Beach, SC on Oct. 3, 2025. (Colleton County Sheriff’s Office)
Authorities arrived at the bar and found Tomlinson lying on the pavement at the bottom of the stairs, according to a heavily redacted report.
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Tomlinson was flown to a hospital by helicopter and she died a little more than three weeks later.
‘Itty-bitty, tiny woman’
Tomlinson was an “itty-bitty, tiny” woman with a “meek and mild” personality, Peterson said. She can’t believe the legal aide who helped people resolve financial issues would start a fight, she said.
Tomlinson and Peterson had been friends for 50 years, Peterson said.
As young girls in Minnesota, they loved to roller skate together. And as they grew older and started families of their own, their children grew up playing together, too. Eventually, they moved away from each other but remained close friends.
For years, they’d discussed meeting to celebrate their 60th birthdays together. But “life got in the way,” Peterson said.
Then in 2025, Tomlinson called and said she was coming to visit in October so they could celebrate their birthdays together, Peterson remembered.
When they checked into their rented condo in Edisto Beach, South Carolina, an employee recommended Coot’s Bar & Grill, she said.
Edisto Island (seen here) is one of South Carolina’s several Sea Islands. (Getty Images)
They sat at the bar and each had two drinks, Peterson said. When a solo performer began playing music, the two women stood up and danced.
Then the bar became crowded, so they decided to leave and catch up at the condo, Peterson said.
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Tomlinson went to pay the bill. Peterson went for the car.
“I left the bar and walked down the steps, the same steps that we came up [to go] in. I turned around to see how far behind me she was … and that’s when I saw her standing at the top of the steps.”
Moments later, her friend was unconscious. They never spoke again.
Joyce Tomlinson, left, and Ruth Peterson, right, enjoyed raising their families together, Peterson told Fox News Digital. (Courtesy of Ruth Peterson)
‘Loving mom,’’trustworthy friend’
Tomlinson’s friends and family still are trying to piece together how the fight could turned violent so quickly, Peterson said.
At her funeral, friends and family remembered Tomlinson as “a loving mom” and “a trustworthy friend,” Peterson wrote in a eulogy read at the funeral. She wasn’t married but did leave behind a son.
“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.”
Hunt was released on $100,000 bond for each of her charges. Later, bond was revoked and she was taken back into custody in the Colleton County Jail in Walterboro, South Carolina. It was not immediately clear why her bond was revoked.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Coot’s Bar & Grill for comment. Hunt’s attorney could not be reached.