“Nothing will bring her back:” Mum determined to live for daughter

‘Nothing will bring her back’: A Queensland mum has made a desperate plea after the driver accused of killing her 14-year-old daughter was found not guilty.

Former Queensland polocrosse player Danielle Butterfield should be setting her sights on competing for Australia this year, although her life was cut short when she was hit by a driver.

Danielle Butterfield, 14, was hit by the maxi-taxi as she rode her bike along Mount Tarampa Road at Mount Tarampa.

The 14-year-old was riding was riding her bike along Mount Tarampa Rd to see her horses, although she never made it to them, or back home to her mother Belinda.

Belinda Butterfield sat in the back of an Ipswich District Court room when the jury verdict was read acquitting the driver, Dru Schaffer, of causing her youngest child’s death.

The 59-year-old had been found not guilty of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death.

“It is what it is. The damage is already done, a guilty verdict won’t bring back my daughter, nothing will,” she said.

“He took my daughter away but I’m still grieving to the point where I don’t have any anger towards the accident - I just wish I could have my daughter back.

“I’m looking forward to it being over because I like to remember Danielle with the horses, not as a coroner or police report.

“Now I can keep living my life and trying to remember Danielle for who she really was.”

Danielle Butterfield and Mum Belinda.

The mother of four, said Danielle was an extremely talented, happy, confident, cheeky, and bubbly girl who lived for her horses and dreamt of playing polocrosse for Australia.

On the day of the accident she was on her way to play with the horse she had been training to carry out that dream – Frankie.

Ms Butterfield said Danielle came home that day and joked with her that Frankie was smarter than her horse before heading out the front door on October 8, 2018.

Although she quickly came back because she had forgotten her bike helmet.

“And that’s the last time I saw her alive,” she said.

Danielle Butterfield, forever 14.

Now Ms Butterfield is determined to keep her little girl’s dream alive for her.

“She lost a lot, it’s a shame because she really wanted to ride for Australia… she trained so hard and it just feels like such a waste for her not to get there,” she said.

“We try to live her dream through the horses but it’s hard when you don’t have the main objective of the dream which is Danielle.”

Belinda Butterfield outside the Ipswich Courthouse in May 2022.

Ms Butterfield urged others who have lost loved ones not to hide or be afraid of the grief.

“Bring them with you and live for them,” she said.

“It’s not an easy thing to lose a child no matter how old they are or how old you are.

“It’s something you have to keep moving forward on. I could have easily given up but I just kept pushing myself forward.

“I seem to be living some of the best days with grief that you could ever dream of because every day I wake up it’s another adventure – another day of what we could have done together.

“She always swore she would never leave home and I suppose in a way she got her wish – and that she would always be with me.”