Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, Saoirse Hill, dies at 22

The Associated Press

5 years ago

FILE - In this June 6, 2000 file photo, Robert F. Kennedy's granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill ... — FILE – In this June 6, 2000 file photo, Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill places a white rose at the Eternal Flame, President John F. Kennedy’s gravesite, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. Hill, has died at the age of 22. The Kennedy family released a statement on Thursday night, Aug. 1, 2019, following reports of a death at the family’s compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Hill was the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s fifth child, Courtney, and Paul Michael Hill. (AP Photo/Hillery Smith Garrison, File)

FILE – This Aug. 27, 2009 file photo shows the main home in the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, has died at the age of 22. The Kennedy family released a statement on Thursday night, Aug. 1, 2019, following reports of a death at the family’s compound in Hyannis Port. Hill was the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s fifth child, Courtney, and Paul Michael Hill. (AP Photo/Stew Milne, File)

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., top left, stands next to his wife Victoria Reggie Kennedy, right, and Courtney Kennedy Hill, left, holding her daughter Saoirse Roisin Hill, while visiting Robert F. Kennedy’s gravesite with the family Friday, June 6, 1997, in Arlington, Va., on the anniversary of Kennedy’s death. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy, D-Mass., kneels at right, next to Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s wife, while his wife Beth, in blue suit, stands behind him. Kerry Kennedy Cuomo stands at right while holding her daughter Cara Cuomo, while her other daughter Mariah Cuomo touches the cross. Father Gerry Creedin is second from right, next to an unidentified person. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)

HYANNIS PORT, Mass. — Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, has died, the family announced Thursday night.

The Kennedy family’s statement followed reports of a death at the storied Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The statement was issued by Brian Wright O’Connor, a spokesman for Saoirse Hill’s uncle, former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II.

Hill was the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s fifth child, Courtney, and Paul Michael Hill, who was one of four falsely convicted in the 1974 Irish Republican Army bombings of two pubs.

“She lit up our lives with her love, her peals of laughter and her generous spirit,” the statement said, adding that she was passionate about human rights and women’s empowerment and worked with indigenous communities to build schools in Mexico.

She attended Boston College, where she was a member of the class of 2020, the university confirmed to The Boston Globe.

The family statement did not include a cause of death.

The Cape & Islands district attorney’s office said Barnstable police responded to a home “for a reported unattended death” Thursday afternoon, according to a statement cited by news outlets. Barnstable police and Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the district attorney’s office are investigating.

“The world is a little less beautiful today,” Hill’s 91-year-old grandmother, Ethel Kennedy, was quoted as saying in the statement.