A 15-year-old girl died after plunging 20ft from train tracks into a pool of water as she returned home from a night out.

Mackenzie Hohl-Sowa was discovered dead by a walker after her family had spent three days searching for her.

The schoolgirl, from Clinton, Massachusetts, is thought to have fallen from a wall as she walked behind a supermarket on Friday night.

The girl's mother Katie Hohl said 'she's still my baby girl' as she spoke of her heartbreak following the tragedy.

After nearly three days of searching, her worst fears were realised yesterday when her daughter was discovered dead.

Last night Mackenzie's grandmother Sandra Sowa said she had told Mackenzie to be safe as she went out for the night on Friday.

She told NECN: 'She was the love of my life. My heart is broken and I don't know how to fix it.
'We used to always have this thing "I love you to the universe". She kissed me and she told me she was going out and I said "be safe".'

The grandmother added that they had frantically searched for the teenager after she failed to return home or answer her phone.

She added: '(We were) searching, searching. My grandson, my husband, they walked the tracks. Nobody has called and told us anything, but last night I knew. Don't ask me how, I got in bed, and I said, I just know.'

The schoolgirl, who would have been 16 in August, suffered heartbreak two years ago when her father died in 2010.

She wrote a heartbreaking open letter to her father which was published in a newspaper.

She wrote that she had taken a '180 degree turn around the sharpest corner of life' a year after the tragedy.

Her death is not being treated as suspicious and is thought to be a tragic accident.

Mackenzie's mother Katie Hohl, who was never married to her daughter's father, described her daughter as 'beautiful, bright and intelligent.'

The girl went to Clinton High School.
Her mother told Boston.com: 'She was a beautiful, bright, intelligent, wonderful, wonderful girl.

'I'm still in shock. She's too young. This is not happening. This is not happening. She's still my baby.'

The mother added that they had been putting up pictures of her daughter as they desperately searched for her.

In a post on her daughter's Facebook page, she wrote: 'thank you for all your support and help in locating my daughter. She is now at peace and with her dad.'