THE DAUGHTER OF one of the Guildford Four, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, was found dead yesterday at the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts aged 22.

The student was the granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy, former US Attorney General and brother of John F Kennedy. She attended Boston College where she was due to graduate next year.

The Kennedy family made the announcement in a statement overnight following reports of a death at the Kennedy house. No cause of death was given.

The statement was issued by Brian Wright O’Connor, spokesman for Saoirse Hill’s uncle former congressman Joseph P Kennedy II.

“She lit up our lives with her love, her peals of laughter and her generous spirit,” the statement said.

It added that she was passionate about human rights and women’s empowerment. She had also worked with indigenous communities to build schools in Mexico.

“The world is a little less beautiful today,” Hill’s grandmother Ethel Kennedy said in the statement.

Kerry Kennedy, Hill’s aunt, said their hearts were “shattered by the loss”.

Hill was the daughter of one of Robert F Kennedy’s children Courtney, and Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four wrongly convicted of IRA bombings.

Paul Hill was imprisoned for his alleged involvement in the 1974 Guildford pub bombings. He was released from prison in 1989.

Local police near the Kennedy home responded to a house “for a reported unattended death” on Thursday, according to the Cape and Islands district attorney’s office.

Barnstable police and Massachusetts detectives assigned to the district attorney’s office are investigating.

- with reporting from Associated Press.