NEWPORT, N.H. — The heartbroken grandfather of the toddler found outside her house in the bitter cold early today said the family is “a mess” over the death of Sofia Van Schoick.

“She got out the door and couldn’t get back in,” the girl’s grandfather, Lindsay Van Schoick, told the Herald.

The girl was found on Maple Street at about 7 a.m. in this central New Hampshire town, police said. Neighbors found her lying face-down in the snow at the bottom of the stairs, police added. It was 8 degrees below zero.

“She got up around 4 this morning,” the grandfather said. “Neighbors heard her but didn’t see anything. … My daughter’s a mess. We’re all a mess. They just moved here this weekend.”

Van Schoick described Sofia, 2 ½, as “very precocious, very active, very happy, very independent.”

Police are investigating the death and Newport police Chief Jim Burroughs told the local paper, The Valley News, that the death is not suspicious and “appears to be a bad accident.”

The Valley News also reported a neighbor said he woke up about 4 a.m. to the sound of a child crying but couldn’t see anything. He said he and his girlfriend found the girl at about 7 a.m. at the bottom of a set of stairs off a screened-in porch in a back apartment of the house.

Developing …