Harry Dunn’s family can sue wife of CIA officer in US courts over fatal crash

Judge criticises Anne Sacoolas for ‘running away’ from UK charges after invoking diplomatic immunity

Teenager Harry Dunn died in August 2019 in Northamptonshire, England, and Anne Sacoolas is charged with causing his death by dangerous driving. Family photo

A US judge ruled that a British family will be allowed to sue an American woman who used diplomatic immunity to flee the UK after allegedly killing a teenage boy in a car crash.

Harry Dunn, 19, died in August 2019 outside the Royal Air Force Croughton base in Northamptonshire in England.

Police said Anne Sacoolas – the wife of a CIA intelligence officer – struck the teenager’s motorbike when she was driving on the wrong side of the road.

British police charged Ms Sacoolas with causing death by dangerous driving but she claimed diplomatic immunity and refused to return to the country. She lives in the US state of Virginia.

The Dunn family filed a civil lawsuit in a US District Court in Alexandria last year, but the Sacoolas' asked a judge to dismiss the case, arguing that it should be heard in England instead.

In an order rejecting that request, US District Judge T S Ellis III said that a civil trial in the UK would not be an adequate forum because the Sacoolases had made clear that they have no intention of returning to the country.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the government supported the Dunn family's legal battle.

"We support the family seeking justice for the loss of Harry," he told the BBC.

During a pre-trial hearing, Ms Sacoolas’s lawyer revealed that she too was a US government employee for “an intelligence agency” at the time of the crash.

Mr Ellis said it appeared that she worked for the State Department. Her status as an employee, rather than as a spouse, could weaken her claims to immunity.

According to the claim, Ms Sacoolas was driving her Volvo on the wrong side of the road near the Croughton base when she struck Mr Dunn.

The lawsuit said that she had been living in England for several weeks by then and should have been familiar with driving on the left side of the road.

The Dunns alleged that she did not call an ambulance and that it was a passer-by who arrived several minutes later who phoned for help.

In court, her lawyer said that she admitted causing the crash and took “full responsibility”. In response, the judge wrote: “Accepting full responsibility doesn’t mean you run away – it means that you stay there and face it. So I think you shouldn’t overplay the ‘full responsibility’ card.”

Agnieszka Fryszman, lawyer for the Dunn family, welcomed the judge’s ruling. “Anne Sacoolas’s motion to transfer the case to England was simply unfair. She confirmed she would never return to England to participate in any trial, so we are glad the judge rejected what was in effect an effort to evade accountability for her actions,” she said.

Charlotte Charles, Dunn’s mother, said that her family wants “the truth about what happened to Harry”.

“Any parent who has lost a child can relate to the added pain that comes without having any accountability and we are ready to move forward and finally get long overdue answers,” she said.