DEVASTATING

Maryland Officials Find Body of Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean After Canoe Accident

The public health official and human rights lawyer went missing with her 8-year-old son on Thursday while paddling a canoe in the Chesapeake Bay.

Officials found the body of Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean on Monday, four days after she and her 8-year-old son went missing while paddling a canoe in the Chesapeake Bay. McKean was last seen with her son on Thursday afternoon “struggling to return to shore in a canoe,” near Annapolis, according to a Coast Guard statement. Her son, Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean, has not yet been found. Maryland Natural Resources Police said in a statement that they found McKean “deceased in 25 feet of water and about 2.5 miles south of her mother’s residence in Shady Slide, Maryland where the canoe was launched.” McKean, 40, was the daughter of former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and the granddaughter of former U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

“Our hearts are crushed,” McKean’s mother said in a statement on Friday, “yet we shall try to summon the grace of God and what strength we have to honor the hope, energy and passion that Maeve and Gideon set forth into the world.” McKean was a public health official, human rights lawyer, and served as the executive director of Georgetown University Global Health Initiative when she disappeared.