Chappaquiddick incident

The Chappaquiddick incident occurred on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, United States, sometime around midnight between July 18 and 19, 1969, when United States Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a narrow bridge, causing it to overturn in Poucha Pond. The crash resulted in the death (by suffocation) of his 28-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped inside the vehicle.

Kennedy left a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the eastern end of Martha's Vineyard, at 11:15 p.m. Friday July 18. He later stated that his intent was to immediately take Kopechne to a ferry landing and return to Edgartown, but that he accidentally made a wrong turn onto a dirt road leading to a one-lane bridge. After his car skidded off the bridge into the pond, Kennedy swam free, and maintained that he tried to rescue Kopechne from the submerged car but could not. Kopechne's death could have happened any time between about 11:30 p.m. Friday and 1 a.m. Saturday, as an off-duty deputy sheriff stated he saw a car matching Kennedy's license plate at 12:40 a.m. Kennedy left the scene and did not report the accident to police until after 10 a.m. Saturday. Meanwhile, a diver recovered Kopechne's body from Kennedy's car shortly before 9 a.m. Saturday.

At a court hearing on July 25, Kennedy pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended jail sentence. In a televised statement that same evening, Kennedy said that his conduct immediately after the accident had "made no sense to me at all" and that he regarded his failure to report the accident immediately as "indefensible". A January 5, 1970, judicial inquest concluded that Kennedy and Kopechne had not intended to take the ferry, and that Kennedy had intentionally turned toward the bridge, operating his vehicle negligently if not recklessly and at too high a speed for the hazard which the bridge posed in the dark. The judge stopped short of recommending charges, and a grand jury convened on April 6, returning no indictments. On May 27, a Registry of Motor Vehicles hearing resulted in Kennedy's driver's license being suspended for sixteen months after the accident.

The Chappaquiddick incident became a national news item and influenced Kennedy's decision not to run for president in 1972 and 1976, Later it was said to have undermined his chances of ever becoming president. Kennedy ultimately decided to enter the 1980 Democratic presidential primaries, but earned only 37.6% of the vote and lost the nomination to incumbent U.S. President Jimmy Carter.