A teenager fell to her death from a motorway bridge 15 years after her mother jumped from a seven-storey balcony with her in her arms.

Mid Kent College student Yazmina Howard, 18, from Maidstone, died after she is believed to have jumped from the bridge which crosses the M20 at Larkfield.

She was pronounced dead at the scene just after 10pm on Monday.

Tragically, her mother, Maxine Carr, also jumped to her death in 2003, from her flat clutching hold of three-year-old Yazmina.

Her grandmother, Janet Howard, described Yazmina as: "A beautiful girl, inside and out."

Yazmina's mother, Maxine Carr, jumped to her death with three-year-old in her arms, believing her abusive former boyfriend planned to kidnap their daughter.

They lived in Hawley Court in Maidstone's London Road.

The toddler miraculously escaped alive, but suffered a number of broken bones in her arm, rib and jaw and damage to the back of her skull.

But this week Yazmina tragically fell to the same fate, just hours after going out for pizza with a close friend.

Her grandmother, Janet Howard, 68, who adopted the Mid Kent College student as her own, said: “I text her to ask if she was alright and still out with her friend.

“I got a text from her at 9.23pm saying she was okay. That was the last I heard.

"Whatever happened from then, we’ll never know - we don’t know what has driven her to this at all.

“Yazmina was a beautiful girl, inside and out, who would never hurt anybody.

“She was an emotional person, which may have been connected to the trauma she experienced when we lost her mum, but she seemed to battle through it all. She was strong.

“She’d call us nan and grandad but sometimes ‘mum’ would slip out - she was more like a daughter than a granddaughter to us.

“Yazmina didn’t smoke, she didn’t go out clubbing.

"Even when she drank wine, she’d make sure it was vegan because she loved animals and cared about the environment. That’s the kind of girl Yazmina was.”

Yazmina’s mother fell more than 100 ft from the balcony of her flat at Hawley Court in London Road.

She was discovered alive but very cold and whimpering, close to her mum’s body.

Nicola Morrell, of London Road, told an inquest she was at home the previous night when she heard raised voices from a top floor flat at about 9pm.

She said: “I could see from my window that someone was walking across the balcony with a child.

"I saw objects thrown from the top balcony and I could hear that a child was upset.”

Miss Morrell called the police but by the time a patrol car arrived things appeared to have calmed down, she said.

However, she was then woken again, by a “very loud thud” and later by the sound of a child crying.

“It was a horrible noise,” said Miss Morrell.

“It was fairly quiet to begin with, but it got louder and when it was loud it was blood-curdling.”

If you need help on an emotional issue you can call the Samaritans free, at any time, on 116 123.