Saoirse Kennedy Hill, granddaughter of former United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, breathed her last on Thursday afternoon (local time) after suffering an apparent drug overdose at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, according to two people close to the family.
Saoirse, 22, was at the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod, where her grandmother-- the late presidential candidate and the environmental and human rights activist-- Ethel Kennedy, resides, the family friends told The New York Times. She later was taken to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, where she was pronounced dead.
"Our hearts are shattered by the loss of our beloved Saoirse," the Kennedy family said in a statement.
"Her life was filled with hope, promise and love," the statement read.
The statement quoted Ethel Kennedy, 91, Robert F. Kennedy's widow, as saying, "The world is a little less beautiful today."
The authorities issued a statement confirming a death at the property but did not disclose the identity of the victim or the cause of death.
"Early this afternoon Barnstable police responded to a residence on Marchant Avenue in Hyannis Port for a report of an unattended death," said Tara Miltimore of the Cape and Islands District Attorney's Office.
"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," Miltimore added.
In 2016, before enrolling in Boston College, where she was a communication major and vice president of the College Democrats, Saoirse wrote about her struggles with depression and mental illness for the student newspaper at Deerfield Academy, a private preparatory school in Massachusetts.
Her depression "took root in the beginning of my middle school years and will be with me for the rest of my life." She described "deep bouts of sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest," she wrote.
Saoirse spent part of her childhood in Ireland and often said she was proud of her Irish heritage and her Gaelic given name, which means freedom. Her father, Paul Michael Hill, is one of the Guildford Four, who were falsely accused of involvement in Irish Republican Army bombings. He was imprisoned for 15 years before his conviction was overturned. He and Saoirse's mother married shortly after his release in 1993 and separated in 2006.
Saoirse shifted to the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod with her grandmother in March 2018.
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