The wife of an American diplomat sparked an international incident when she fled the United Kingdom after killing a teenager when she drove her car on the wrong side of the road.
Police said that Anne Sacoolas, 42, pulled out of the Royal Air Force Croughton base, with her 12-year-old son in a front seat, in her Volvo XC90 SUV on the evening of Aug. 27. Harry Dunn, 19, was traveling to his father’s house on a motorcycle when he met Sacoolas in a head-on collision.
The Croughton base, known as the “spy base” to locals, houses a CIA and NSA facility responsible for surveilling German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone. Sacoolas and her husband, Jonathan, who has been identified in Britain as a “spy” working for a United States intelligence agency, lived at the base with their three children. The parents, both registered Republicans, married when Anne worked for the U.S. State Department.
Dunn went hurtling over the SUV, causing multiple injuries, and he died a short time later at a local hospital. Witnesses said Sacoolas, who had been in the U.K. for less than a month, admitted responsibility for hitting Dunn. She was not arrested at the scene or tested for drugs or alcohol because at that point Dunn was not dead.
British police learned that Anne Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity. Police met with Sacoolas the day after the crash and returned to the base for a followup interview on Sept. 15. By that time, the Sacoolas family had fled the U.K. for the U.S.
CIA officers under diplomatic cover are officially listed as State Department employees. President Trump has referred to Jonathan Sacoolas as “a diplomat.” The couple have lived at various addresses in northern Virginia close to CIA headquarters at Langley
The Washington Examiner has established that both Anne and Jonathan Sacoolas were guilty of traffic offenses in Virginia. In 2006, Anne Sacoolas was charged with failure to “pay full time and attention” in Fairfax, Virginia, and pleaded no contest and paid a fine. In 2013, Jonathan Sacoolas was fined for failure to obey a highway sign in Reston, Virginia. In 2000, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless speeding after being caught traveling 92 mph in a 65 mph zone in Loudon County, Virginia.
The swift departure of Sacoolas caused an uproar in Britain and Prime Minister Boris Johnson raised the matter with Trump, urging him to return her to the U.K. to face trial.
Trump said on Wednesday that he had spoken with the prime minister and was working out a solution that would give Dunn’s grieving family some “healing.”
