Anne Sacoolas, an American who fled Britain in 2019 after her car hit a 19-year-old British motorcyclist in central England, pleaded guilty on Thursday to his death. teenager, Harry Dunn, due to careless driving, UK prosecutors said.
The Crown Prosecution Service previously charged Ms Sacoolas, 45, caused death by dangerous driving in December 2019, but she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge during a hearing in London on Thursday at the central criminal court of England and Wales. She appeared at the hearing on a video call.
Police say Ms Sacoolas, a Foreign Office employee, was driving on the wrong side of the road near the village of Croughton, central England, on August 27, 2019, when her car collided with Mr Dunn, who was driving. motorcycle on the right side of the road. Mr. Dunn died at the hospital shortly after.
At the time, Sacoolas’ husband was working for the US government at a British military base, RAF Croughton. She fled Britain under diplomatic immunity a few weeks after the accident, which caused tension between Britain and the US.
USA more inflammation those tensions in January 2020 when Britain rejected a request to extradite Ms. Sacoolas.
Initial reports of the crash identified Ms Sacoolas as the wife of a US diplomat, but at a hearing in February 2021, Ms Sacoolas’ lawyer, John McGavin, said she was working for an intelligence agency at the time of the accident and was later assigned that she was a State Department employee. Her current employment status is unclear. The State Department responded to a request for comment by saying that a spokesman would address the matter during the department’s daily press conference Thursday afternoon.
Mr. Dunn’s parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, went to the White House in October 2019 to meeting with former President Donald J. Trump, who surprised them by revealing that Miss Sacoolas was in an adjoining room. Mr. Dunn’s parents refused to see her.
Ms Charles said in a statement on Thursday that she was “relieved” by the guilty plea.
“We’re going to need time to sort it all out, but I promised Harry the night he died that we’d get him justice and that’s what happened today,” she said. “Promise fulfilled.”
At Thursday’s hearing, Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Ms Sacoolas would be sentenced at the end of November and ordered her to appear in person, BBC reported. Death by careless driving carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Sacoolas’ attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Dunn’s family also filed a civil lawsuit against Ms. Sacoolas in US District Court in Virginia. In September 2021, a spokesman for Mr Dunn’s family, Radd Seiger, said they had reach a settlement Sacoolas in the lawsuit but declined to divulge details.
