Body of Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean found

The body of Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean was discovered by divers Monday evening, Maryland authorities confirmed.

The Maryland Natural Resources Police said in a statement that members of a dive and rescue team found the body in 25 feet of water approximately 2 1/2 miles from her mother’s residence Monday evening in Shady Side, Md., according to reports. 

McKean, 41, and her son Gideon, 8, were last seen Thursday. Police said they will continue their search for the boy Tuesday.

A search for McKean and her son was called off 26 hours after they went missing, CNN reported.

McKean was the granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, a former senator and U.S. attorney general, and the daughter of former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. She served as a public health and human rights attorney and was the executive director of the Georgetown University Global Health Initiative.

McKean’s husband, David McKean, shared that the family was self-quarantining at her mother’s home on the Chesapeake Bay amid the coronavirus pandemic in a Friday Facebook post. The mother and son were playing kickball when the ball fell into the water, and McKean wrote that “they got into a canoe, intending simply to retrieve the ball, and somehow got pushed by wind or tide into the open bay.”

McKean shared that his wife “was my everything.”

“She was magical — with endless energy that she would put toward inventing games for our children, taking on another project at work or in our community, and spending time with our friends,” he wrote.

“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.”

The couple also has two other children — Gabriella, 7, and Toby, 2.