British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has asked the United States to reconsider giving immunity to a diplomat’s wife who fled the United Kingdom after a teenager died in a fatal crash.
Authorities said Saturday that a 42-year-old woman, who is considered a suspect in the wrong-way collision, left the U.K. after she previously told investigators “she had no plans to leave the country in the near future.”
“I do not think that it can be right to use the process of diplomatic immunity for this type of purpose. And I hope that Anne Sacoolas will come back and will engage properly with the processes of law as they are carried out in this country,” Johnson said, disclosing the woman’s identity. “That’s a point that we’ve raised or are raising today with the American ambassador here in the U.K., and I hope it will be resolved very shortly.”
He added, “And to anticipate a question you might want to raise, if we can’t resolve it, then of course I will be raising it myself personally with the White House.”
Boris Johnson says he will speak to the White House “personally” to urge the US to waive the immunity of a diplomat’s wife who is suspected of being involved in a crash that left 19-year-old Harry Dunn dead.
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Harry Dunn, 19, died in an Aug. 27 wreck after a car collided with his motorcycle near the Royal Air Force Croughton station, which is operated by the U.S. Air Force. Police said a car traveling on the wrong side of the road hit Dunn head-on. Dunn sustained serious injuries and died at the hospital.
Dunn’s parents pleaded for President Trump to send Sacoolas back to the U.K.
“President Trump, please listen,” Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said in an interview with Sky News. “We’re a family in ruin. We’re broken.”
“We can’t grieve,” she said. “Please, please let her get back on a plane.”
“We express our deepest sympathies and offer condolences to the family of the deceased in the tragic August 27 accident involving a vehicle driven by the spouse of a U.S. diplomat assigned to the United Kingdom Embassy,” a statement from the U.S. Embassy in London said.
The embassy would not confirm the identities of those involved in the collision “due to security and privacy considerations,” it said. The embassy did confirm “the family has left the U.K.”
Family members of diplomats living abroad are covered by immunity under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Sacoolas is married to U.S. diplomat Jonathan Sacoolas, and the couple has three children, according to Sky News.
