This article is more than 5 months old

This article is more than 5 months old

Divers and boats will on Sunday resume their search in the Chesapeake Bay for the bodies of the daughter and a grandson of former Maryland lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland police said.

Kathleen Townsend Kennedy mourns relatives lost in canoe accident Read more

The search began on Thursday afternoon after a report of a canoe in the bay that did not return to shore and appeared to be overtaken by strong winds. The search was suspended on Saturday night, a Maryland natural resources police news release said.

The missing canoeists were identified as Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, 40, and McKean’s eight-year-old son, Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean.

“With profound sadness, I share the news that the search for my beloved daughter Maeve and grandson Gideon has turned from rescue to recovery,” Kathleen Kennedy Townsend said in a statement on Friday night.

Kennedy Townsend, who served two terms as Maryland’s lieutenant governor, is the eldest daughter of the US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, who was shot dead in 1968, and niece of John F Kennedy, the 35th president who was assassinated in 1963.

On Saturday, vessels conducted sonar operations around the area where the two were last seen and where their overturned canoe was recovered, according to police. The mother and son may have been paddling the canoe from a home in Shady Side, Maryland, to retrieve a ball and could not paddle back to shore, police said earlier.

Maeve McKean, a public health and human rights lawyer, was executive director of the Georgetown University Global Health Initiative. She graduated from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and law school.

“Maeve was a master connector who brought together faculty and students across disciplines and schools in order to advance our shared mission for improving health and advancing justice, particularly for those left out or left behind,” John Monahan, an adviser to Georgetown’s president, said in a news release.

Monahan said the university community was “heartsick” about what happened.