JFK's Niece Shares Details About Fateful Day on Assassination Anniversary

Maria Shriver, the niece of John F. Kennedy, has opened up about his assassination.

Shriver, a TV journalist and the daughter of JFK's sister Eunice, posted a tweet on November 22—the 59th anniversary of the president's shooting in Dallas—revealing how his death has stayed with her.

"On this day in 1963, my uncle was killed by an assassin's bullet. I was in the third grade at the time. I was taken out of class and sent home. This day is forever seared into my heart and mind," she wrote.

The tweet has been liked more than 95,000 times in 24 hours. Shriver went on to post follow-up messages about how shootings affect families across the U.S.

She wrote: "Anyone who's impacted by gun violence or any other shocking death is traumatized by that day, by that experience, forever. You have to do deep trauma work to move on from the age that it happened. Work that involves your heart, your body, your small children, self.

"Go gently today, as millions of people are working through their trauma. Millions of people erupt from their trauma. Millions of people are still grieving things that happened years ago or decades ago. Millions are never the same again.

"Let's help others by helping ourselves heal, and then may we each go out and help another. Our own pain guides us to our own healing, which heals the public good."

More than 18,000 Americans have been killed this year in shootings classified as homicide, accidents or defensive gun use, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

On the day that Shriver posted her tweet, at least six people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart store in Chesapeake, Virginia. On Saturday, five people were shot dead at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

Shriver also posted about her uncle's assassination in November last year, when followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory had become fixated on JFK and his son John F. Kennedy Jr.

The conspiracy theorists flocked to the site of JFK's assassination, Dealey Plaza, because they thought the former president and his son, who died in a 1999 plane crash, would somehow "return" on November 22—and declare Donald Trump president.

At the time, pity "cult members or conspiracy theorists" but instead to remember the bereaved families.

Shriver retweeted a clip of his comments, adding: "Well said, Brian Williams. He's right, you never get over these losses. I know many others struggle with theirs, as well."

The assassination of JFK has been the subject of various conspiracy theories over the decades.

The FBI conducted some 25,000 interviews in its inquiry and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the shooter and had acted alone. The Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination for nearly a year, agreed.

On that day, JFK's motorcade arrived at Dealey Plaza around 12:30 p.m., according to the Kennedy presidential library. Crowds of people had lined the street to see the president and first lady. As the open-top car passed the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire rang out.

Bullets fired by Oswald struck the president in the neck and head as he sat next to his wife Jackie. He was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital nearby but was pronounced dead at 1 p.m.

JFK was the fourth president to be assassinated in office, after Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley.

Newsweek has reached out to Shriver for comment.