A WOMAN whose daughter died in a crash caused by a drink-driver says the tragedy almost drove her to suicide.

The mother spoke out after the driver was sentenced in a German court.

Danielle Freeman was 14 when she died, along with another girl aged 15, on July 15 last year, when the car they were travelling in careered off the road while overtaking on a sharp bend and smashed into a tree.

The Vauxhall Calibra was driven by Queen's Royal Hussars Trooper Matthew John Palmer, then aged 18, who had been drinking.

A 16-year-old girl was also seriously injured in the accident.

Danielle's Cwmbran-born mother Lesley, 35, said the death devastated her and husband Dean, 36, and their other children Ieuan, 11, and 17-year-old Roxanne.

Mrs Freeman - known by her middle name of Jane - told the Argus: "If it hadn't been for our other two children, I would probably have put myself in a little wooden box as well and have gone up and looked for Danielle somewhere."

Palmer, now 19, was at a pub with a group including the two girls in the north-west German village of Schloss Neuhaus, close to the Army base of Paderborn, where Danielle's father Dean, also from Cwmbran and a warrant officer with the 1st Battalion Royal Regiment of Wales, is based.

Now he is serving five years in a young offenders institution after being convicted at an Army court martial of two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.

He was also discharged from the Army at the end of the two-week trial.

Mrs Freeman had thought Danielle was staying at a weekend sleepover at a 13-year-old friend's house.

The family should have been at a posting in Warminster at the time of the accident, but were sent back to the regiment's Barker Barracks in Paderborn when Mr Freeman was promoted.

Every Sunday, they still take flowers to the tree where Danielle died to remember her and the other girl who died.

Roxanne, who will soon be 18, hopes to study at Usk College in September and the family plan to settle in Spain once Mr Freeman's 22 years of service are up.