Post by JoannaL on Aug 1, 2019 23:18:45 GMT -5
RFK's Granddaughter Found Dead at Kennedy Compound
Police are investigating the death of Saoirse Kennedy Hill, the 22-year-old daughter of Courtney Kennedy Hill, daughter of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannisport, Mass. According to authorities, Barnstable police responded to 28 Marchant Avenue in Hyannisport for an unattended death around 2:30 p.m. The three homes comprising the Kennedy compound (above) line Marchant Avenue along Nantucket Sound. Reports indicate Ms. Hill died of an apparent drug overdose.
Saoirse Hill attended Boston College, where she majored in communications, and Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass. She was as spokesperson for awareness of depression and mental illness and in a 2016 article in The Deerfield Scroll, the Deerfield Academy student newspaper, Hill admitted she attempted suicide prior to her junior year at the institution. “My depression took root in the beginning of my middle school years and will be with me for the rest of my life,” she wrote. “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. People talk about cancer freely; why is it so difficult to discuss the effects of depression, bi-polar, anxiety, or schizophrenic disorders? Just because the illness may not be outwardly visible doesn’t mean the person suffering from it isn’t struggling.”
“Our hearts are shattered by the loss of our beloved Saoirse (above),” the family said in a statement issued by Brian Wright O’Connor, a spokesperson for Joseph P. Kennedy II, Ms. Hill’s uncle. “Her life was filled with hope, promise and love. She cared deeply about friends and family, especially her mother Courtney, her father Paul, her stepmother Stephanie, and her grandmother Ethel.”
The statement quoted Ethel Kennedy as saying: “The world is a little less beautiful today .... She lit up our lives with her love, her peals of laughter and her generous spirit.”
Cape and Islands Assistant District Attorney Tara Miltimore said in a statement that the matter remains under investigation by Barnstable police and the district attorney’s office.
Multiple generations of the Kennedy family have lived at the Hyannisport compound, which famously served as President John F. Kennedy’s summer White House.
Sources: Louis Casiano, Fox News, August 1, 2019, and Alex Johnson, NBC News, August 1, 2019.