FATAL MISTAKE BEHIND KENNEDY CANOE HORROR
GRANDDAUGHTER & HER SON WEREN’T WEARING LIFE VESTS
ROBERT F. KENNEDY’S granddaughter and her eight-year-old son didn’t have to die! A National ENQUIRER investigation has found that Maeve Kennedy McKean, 40, and son Gideon could have been saved from drowning off the coast of Maryland if they had worn life jackets!
In the latest tragedy to befall the political dynasty, the two were blown out into the open water while trying to retrieve a kickball.
Maeve, an attorney, had been playing with Gideon, her daughter Gabriella, 7, and son Toby, 2, in the backyard of her mother Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s waterfront home in Shady Side, Md., on April 2. Mother and son paddled out in a 20-foot yellow canoe, but it was quickly pulled from a calm cove into Chesapeake Bay, which had three-foot waves and winds gusting at 29 mph.
“It was reported that they were not wearing life jackets,” said Maryland Natural Resources Police Capt. Brian Rathgeb.
According to Coast Guard regulations, anyone under the age of 13 must don a life vest before going onto the water. Retired U.S. Coast Guard
Lt. Pete Gleason added: “It’s tragic and reckless not to be wearing a personal flotation device. It would have saved these two lives.
“It was reckless. It’s just another tragic chapter in the Kennedy saga where recklessness has gotten the
better part of them.”
Maeve was a strong swimmer, but she was not carrying a cellphone, sources said.
According to authorities, other adults were at her mother’s home at the time, and 911 calls were placed by someone at the property and a bystander who saw the canoe in the bay.
“The two other children watched from shore as their mother and brother were swept away,” said Maryland Natural Resources Police spokesperson Lauren Moses. “The fire department arrived and could see the pair way out in the water. They immediately sent out rescue boats and a Coast Guard cutter. However, they slipped out of view.”
The canoe was recovered two hours later. Despite a frantic search, Maeve’s husband, David McKean, prepared for the worst. In a Facebook post, he wrote: “She was my everything. [Maeve] was magical — with endless energy that she would put toward inventing games for our children … It is impossible to sum up Gideon here. I am heartbroken to even have to try.”
U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Matt Fine broke the news to the family that the search-andrescue effort had been turned into a recovery operation. “The hardest part of the job is to make the decision to stop the search. We kept the family up to date about the process. Obviously, they were hopeful and then heartbroken,” Fine told The ENQUIRER.
Maeve’s body was located by sonar and retrieved by divers on April 6 about two and a half miles south of her mother’s home.
Gideon’s body was recovered on April 8 in 25 feet of water about
2,000 feet from where his mother’s body was found.