SWEPT OUT TO SEA

More heartache has struck America’s blighted Kennedy family after a mother and son ball game ended in tragedy

- KIM ABRAHAMS

IT WAS dubbed “a gathering of love and thanksgiving” and more than 3 000 people were there to support the family and pay their last respects.

Although, of course, this is the time of Covid-19 – which meant the memorial was held virtually, with the thousands of mourners participating via Zoom.

The service was another grim reminder that the coronavirus has affected the lives of virtually every person on the planet – and it was the reason the memorial was being held in the first place.

The mother and son being remembered didn’t die of the virus, but if it hadn’t been for the pandemic they wouldn’t have been on the shore of a cove near the home where they were holing up during isolation.

Now the mother and son are gone, literally blown away – and America’s “royal family” has once again been plunged into mourning.

Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean (40), granddaughter of Ethel and the late Robert F Kennedy, had decided to spend the US lockdown with her family at her mom’s holiday house on the shores of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

She and her husband, David McKean (38), locked up their family home in Washington DC, and headed for the idyllic setting where kids Gideon (8), Gabriella (7) and Toby (2) could run free.

But a ball game ended in unspeakable tragedy after a seemingly innocuous attempt by Maeve and Gideon to fetch a ball from the water.

Their deaths come less than a year after the fatal drug overdose of Saoirse Kennedy Hill, also a granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy and family matriarch Ethel (YOU, 29 August 2019).