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A long-awaited getaway for two best friends celebrating their birthday together ended in tragedy when a bartender allegedly pushed a woman down the stairs, leaving her fatally injured outside a seaside bar in South Carolina.
Mary Lopez Hunt, 68, was charged with voluntary manslaughter, assault and battery, high and aggravated, according to Colleton County court records.
Ruth Peterson recalled this painful memory to Fox News Digital on October 1, 2026, just two days before the one-year anniversary of her friend’s death.
Peterson had just left to pick up their car, while her friend, Joyce Tomlinson, 62, a resident of Minnesota, went to pay her bill at Coot’s Bar & Grill on Edisto Island around 11 p.m. on October 3, 2025.
Best friends since childhood, Joyce Tomlinson, left, and Ruth Peterson, right, enjoyed raising their family together, Peterson told Fox News Digital. (Courtesy of Ruth Peterson)
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Hearing her friend’s voice, Peterson turned around 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 gentle and friendly – briefly exchanging words with another woman behind her. She couldn’t hear what was being said.
“Next thing I know, Joyce turned around to go back down (the stairs), and this woman runs up to her, and pushes her with both hands, and she just sailed,” Peterson said, choking back tears.
“She didn’t fall down the steps. She didn’t go down the steps… She didn’t hit the steps.”
“She went head first and landed on this concrete slab.”
Peterson rushed to her friend and couldn’t find her pulse, she said. Tomlinson began bleeding from his 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 Tomlinson fell down the stairs.
Mary Lopez Hunt was charged with voluntary manslaughter after allegedly pushing Joyce Tomlinson down the stairs outside Coot’s Bar & Grill in Edisto Beach, South Carolina on October 3, 2025. (Coleton County Sheriff’s Office)
Authorities arrived at the bar and found Tomlinson lying on the sidewalk at the bottom of the stairs, according to a heavily redacted report.
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Tomlinson was taken by helicopter to hospital and died just over three weeks later.
“Every little woman”
Tomlinson was a “tiny, tiny” woman with a “sweet, gentle” personality, Peterson said. She can’t believe the paralegal who helped people with their financial problems would start a fight, she said.
Tomlinson and Peterson had been friends for 50 years, Peterson said.
As young girls in Minnesota, they loved rollerblading together. And as they grew up and started families of their own, their children also grew up playing together. Eventually, they grew apart but remained close friends.
For years, they had discussed meeting to celebrate their 60th birthday together. But “life got in the way,” Peterson said.
Then, in 2025, Tomlinson called and said she would come visit him in October so they could celebrate their birthdays together, Peterson recalled.
When they moved into their rented apartment in Edisto Beach, South Carolina, an employee recommended Coot’s Bar & Grill, she said.
Edisto Island (seen here) is one of South Carolina’s many sea islands. (Getty Images)
They sat at the bar and each had two drinks, Peterson said. When a solo artist started playing music, the two women would get up and dance.
Then the bar became crowded, so they decided to leave and meet at the condo, Peterson said.
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Tomlinson went to pay the bill. Peterson went to get the car.
“I left the bar and went down the steps, the same steps we came up (to enter). 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 mother”, “trustworthy friend”
Tomlinson’s friends and family are still trying to understand how the fight could have turned violent so quickly, Peterson said.
At her funeral, friends and family remembered Tomlinson as a “loving mother” and a “trustworthy friend,” Peterson wrote in a eulogy read at the funeral. She was not married but left behind a son.
“It was just very surreal,” Peterson said. “It’s very hard to believe that she’s gone and that someone could do this to another person.”
Hunt was released on $100,000 bail on each of her charges. Later, bond was revoked and she was remanded into Colleton County Jail in Walterboro, South Carolina. It was not immediately clear why his bond was revoked.
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Fox News Digital has contacted Coot’s Bar & Grill for comment. Hunt’s attorney could not be reached.
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