A granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy died of an accidental overdose, according to her death certificate filed in Massachusetts on Friday, Nov. 1.
Saoirse Kennedy Hill, 22, was the daughter of Courtney Kennedy Hill, one of the 11 children of the late presidential candidate and Ethel Kennedy.
Kennedy Hill had acute methadone, diazepam, nordiazepam, fluoxetine, norfluoxetine and ethanol toxicity in her system at the time of death, according to the toxicology results revealed in the death certificate.
First responders were called to a medical emergency at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, at 2:30 p.m. on August 1.
Kennedy Hill was pronounced dead at Cape Cod Hospital at 3:14 p.m, according to her death certificate.
A Boston College communications student, Kennedy Hill was due to graduate next year, the college said after she died.
She had volunteered in Mexico to build schools in indigenous communities and was “moved by the causes of human rights and women’s empowerment,” her family said in a statement released after her death.
“She lit up our lives with her love, her peals of laughter and her generous spirit,” the family’s statement read.
Kennedy Hill had previously written an opinion piece for her high school newspaper about her struggles with depression.
“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 in a column in the Deerfield Academy’s student publication in February 2016. “Although I was mostly a happy child, I suffered bouts of deep sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest.”
Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles in 1968 after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. He had served as attorney general in the administration of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. He also served as a U.S. senator from New York.
RFK’s family, like the rest of the Kennedy clan, has been touched by tragedy.
One of his and Ethel Kennedy’s 11 children, Michael Kennedy, was killed in a skiing accident in Colorado on New Year’s Eve 1997 at age 39. And in 1984, another son, David Anthony Kennedy, died of a drug overdose in Florida at age 28.
JFK’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., was killed with his wife and sister-in-law when his small plane crashed off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in July 1999.
One of Hill’s relatives, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who is now an advocate for substance abuse and mental health treatment, tweeted in tribute to her on Aug. 2.
“Saoirse will always remain in our hearts. She is loved and will be deeply missed,” he wrote.
Saoirse will always remain in our hearts. She is loved and will be deeply missed. pic.twitter.com/HIyLBivXQD
— Patrick J. Kennedy (@PJK4brainhealth) August 2, 2019
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
