Robert F. Kennedy’s Granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy, 22, Dies After Apparent Overdose
RIP. Saoirse Kennedy Hill, one of Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughters, died on Thursday, August 1, at just 22 years old after she suffered from an apparent overdose, The New York Times reported.
Kennedy Hill passed away at the family’s compound — where her grandmother, Ethel Kennedy, lives — in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. According to family friends, Kennedy Hill was taken to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis on Thursday afternoon, where she was pronounced dead.
“Our hearts are shattered by the loss of our beloved Saoirse,” the Kennedy family said in a statement to the outlet. “Her life was filled with hope, promise and love.” Ethel, 91, added, “The world is a little less beautiful today.”
The authorities issued a statement confirming a death at the house but did not disclose the name of the victim or cause of death. “Early this afternoon, Barnstable police responded to a resident on Marchant Avenue in Hyannis Port for a report of an unattended death,” Tara Miltimore of the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office said. “The matter remains under investigation by the Barnstable police as well as state police detectives assigned to the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office.”
Kennedy Hill was a student at Boston College, where she was studying communications and was vice president of the College Democrats. She was expected to graduate in 2020.
Kennedy Hill was candid about her struggles with depression and mental illness and wrote how she was feeling for the student newspaper at Deerfield Academy — a private school in Massachusetts — in 2016. “My depression took root in the beginning of my middle school years and will be with me for the rest of my life,” she confessed at the time. “Although I was mostly a happy child, I suffered bouts of deep sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest. These bouts would come and go, but they did not outwardly affect me until I was a new sophomore at Deerfield.” Kennedy Hill even revealed she “attempted to take my own life” at one point.
Unfortunately, the Kennedy family has dealt with immense tragedies over the years. RFK and his brother John F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1968 and 1963, respectively. Their brother Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was killed during World War II in 1994, and their sister Kathleen Cavendish passed away in a plane crash in 1948. Additionally, JFK’s son John F. Kennedy Jr. also died in a plane crash in 1999, killing his wife and sister-in-law, too.
Kerry Kennedy also took to Instagram to share memories of Kennedy Hill. “She cared deeply about friends and family, especially her mother, Courtney, her father, Paul, and her stepmother, Stephanie, and her grandmother, Ethel, who said, ‘The world is a little less beautiful today,’” she wrote. “She lit up our lives with her love, her peals of laughter and her generous spirit. Saoirse was passionately moved by the causes of human rights and women’s empowerment and found great joy in volunteer work, working alongside indigenous communities to build schools in Mexico. We will love her and miss her forever.”
Kennedy Hill is survived by her parents, Paul Michael Hill and Courtney Kennedy Hill. We are thinking of their family during this tough time.
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