The Chappaquiddick incident occurred on Chappaquiddick Island , Massachusetts , United States, sometime around midnight, between July 18 and 19, , [ 5 ] [ 6 ] when Mary Jo Kopechne died inside the car driven by United States Senator Ted Kennedy after he accidentally drove off a narrow bridge, causing it to overturn in Poucha Pond. Kennedy left a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the eastern end of Martha's Vineyard , at p.
He stated that his intent was to immediately take Kopechne to a ferry landing and return to a hotel in Edgartown , but that he 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 he could not.
Kopechne's death could have happened any time between about p. Friday and 1 a. Saturday, as an off-duty deputy sheriff stated he saw a car matching Kennedy's license plate at a. Kennedy departed from the crash site and failed to report the incident to the police until after 10 a. In the meantime, a diver retrieved Kopechne's body from Kennedy's car shortly before 9 a.
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 crash had "made no sense to me at all" and that he regarded his failure to report the crash, immediately, as "indefensible.
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 crash. The Chappaquiddick incident became a national news item and influenced Kennedy's decision not to run for president in and President Jimmy Carter.
