Body of RFK's Granddaughter Found

Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean's canoe overturned in Chesapeake Bay
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 7, 2020 12:43 AM CDT
Body of RFK's Granddaughter Found
This undated image posted on Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean's Facebook account shows her with her family, including her son Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean, bottom right.   (Twitter via AP)

The body of one Kennedy family member who went missing while canoeing last week has been found, the AP reports. Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, 40, was the granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy and the daughter of former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. She and her 8-year-old son, Gideon, went out in a canoe on a cove in the Chesapeake Bay to retrieve a ball that had been kicked into the water during a game of kickball when the wind or the tide pushed the boat out into the open bay; it was found empty and overturned.

McKean was found in about 25 feet of water early Monday evening, CNN reports; her body was about 2.5 miles south of where the boat had been launched—an empty house owned by McKean's mother where the McKean family was self-quarantining amid the coronavirus pandemic. The search for Gideon will continue Tuesday. "Gideon was 8, but he may as well have been 38," wrote his father in a Facebook post Friday. "He was deeply compassionate, declining to sing children’s songs if they contained a hint of animals or people being treated cruelly. ... It is impossible to sum up Gideon here. I am heartbroken to even have to try. I used to marvel at him as a toddler and worry that he was too perfect to exist in this world. It seems to me now that he was." (More Chesapeake Bay stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X