London – An independent review has sharply criticised police in Britain over their handling of a 2019 road collision between an American driver and a teenage British motorcyclist in which the teenager died and the American fled the country on a claim of diplomatic immunity.
The review, a 118-page report published on Wednesday, said the police should have arrested the American driver, Anne Sacoolas, at the scene, and that officers later mishandled forensic evidence. It also found fault with a senior officer’s social media posts and public remarks about the case, and with how officers interacted with the parents of the 19-year-old victim, Harry Dunn.
Harry Dunn died in the crash in 2019.Credit: Facebook
In publicising the findings, the Northamptonshire Police, the force that was responsible for the case, apologised to Dunn’s parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn.
“The picture which emerges is one of a force which has failed the family on a number of fronts,” Emma James, the Northamptonshire Police’s head of protective services, said in a statement.
The fatal crash occurred as Sacoolas, a US State Department employee whose husband worked for the US government at a British military base, was driving on the wrong side of the road near the village of Croughton, in central England, in August 2019. Harry Dunn, whom her car struck, died later in a hospital.
The episode caused international friction when Sacoolas left Britain three weeks after the crash, claiming diplomatic immunity. Britain issued an extradition request for her return, but the US government rejected it, arguing in a statement at the time that honouring it “would render the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity and would set an extraordinarily troubling precedent.”
Husband Bruce Charles comforts Harry Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, in 2019.Credit: AP
That response infuriated many in Britain, and Boris Johnson, then the prime minister, demanded her return. President Donald Trump then tried unsuccessfully to stage a White House meeting between Dunn’s grieving parents and Sacoolas.
According to the independent police review, “What was an investigation into a fatal road traffic collision became a diplomatic issue with various notable politicians being involved.”
