Larry Hogan Announces Reward in Death of Mother of Naval Academy Student

By Tadi Abedje Published: July 5, 2021

Larry Hogan Announces Reward in Death of Mother of Naval Academy Student

Gov. Larry Hogan, R-Md., speaks at a news conference, Friday, April 3, 2020, in Annapolis, Md. Authorities are searching for the daughter and a grandson of former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend after a canoe they were paddling in the Chesapeake Bay didn’t return to shore. Hogan on Friday identified the missing relatives as Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean and McKean’s 8-year-old son, Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean. (AP Photo/Brian Witte)

By: Tadi Abedje

The governor of Maryland has increased the amount of the reward to $30,000 to look for the suspect in the murder of the Houston, Texas, mom. Cummings was in Maryland to drop off her son, midshipman candidate Leonard Cummings III, at the U.S. Naval Academy. Cummings and her husband were sitting on a hotel patio having dinner in Annapolis enjoying the weather.

Then, around 12:21 a.m., shots were fired, and she was hit multiple times and died. According to Annapolis police, she wasn’t intended to be the target of the shooting.

“His family travels from Houston, Texas, and should have been the highlight of their summer to take their son to an induction ceremony and it ended the way it did,” Chief Ed Jackson said in a news conference. “We’re going to do everything that we can to bring, that’s humanly possible, to bring the killer into a court of law to account for this horrific attack as expeditiously as possible.”

Her son, nicknamed Trey, graduated from Westfield High School last year in Texas. Recently, he graduated from the Naval Preparatory School in Rhode Island.

“It was her happiest moment. She was so excited. She FaceTimed me and she was showing me that she was with my son,” her friend Kashawna Moore said in an interview with ABC 13 in Houston.

In addition to being a wife, mother and friend, Cummings was the president of the booster club at Westfield High School. She had signed up to be a team mom at the Naval Academy.