A grieving mum has paid tribute to her 17-year-old daughter killed in a motorbike crash. India Buchanan died in a crash on November 18.
Her mum, Amanda Buchanan-Hills, has set up a fundraiser to raise money for a memorial bench for India in one of her favourite places. Amanda said: "She was the most caring little girl in the world. I was a midwife for 17 years and she grew up wanting to be a midwife.
"She was the little girl who scooped all the ones who were being bullied at school up. She was in charge of some of the disabled kids at Angmering, she was their designated carer and pushed them from lesson to lesson.
"If anyone was being bullied India would be straight in there. There was a few kids living around our close locally who were nervous about going up to big school and she left half an hour earlier before she went to school to go and get them to take them in with her. That's the kind of girl she was, she was just so loving and caring and wanted to make sure everything was okay for everybody else."
Amanda, 51, told SussexLive: "She didn't have the easiest upbringing because their daddy died when India was five. I nursed him at home and he died of cancer. My kids watched that happen and I think that shaped all of them to be more caring and more understanding that life isn't fair and life is tough. I feel that shaped India a lot, she was just amazing and she threw everything she could into life. She lived fast and crammed a lot in."
India's bench will be in the park in Woodland Avenue, where her name comes from. Amanda said: "My other two have traditional names but her father Barry took her siblings to the park when I was heavily pregnant with India and he heard another dad shout India to one of his daughters and it stuck.
"That park has all of our memories in it as a family. It's a short walk away from us and we went all the time for picnics, playing football, playing on the swings and the butterfly garden at the end she used to love going to. It was all of our go-to and she was part of the youth group there on Thursday.
"I just felt that was a good place really for her friends to go and sit and think of her. This bench will mean the world. There's nowhere else it is appropriate to be. There's memories from when I was pregnant with her to her dying day."
Amanda hopes the memorial bench will help India's friends process what has happened. She said: "India's friends are so young. I'm 51 and I can't process this, so how they are trying to process it at 16/17 years old I have no idea. So if it's somewhere they can sit and talk about her that's a positive."
The biking community has planned a "final ride" for India before she is laid to rest. Amanda said: "I'm absolutely bereft. After her father died it was me and her for eight years as my other two were older. She was my right arm, my little shadow and we did everything together. Absolutely everything.
"On the Monday when she turned 17 I took her for a spa day and thank god that we had that day just me and her. It was beautiful, just the most beautiful day. Then she went off to Portsmouth for this bike group and I didn't see her again. She died on the Friday."
