A UK court has handed down an eight-month suspended prison sentence to Anne Sacoolas, an American woman who admitted causing the death of 19-year-old Harry Dunn by reckless driving in August 2019.
Sacoolas, the wife of a US intelligence officer, was driving on the wrong side when her car collided with Dunn’s motorcycle outside RAF Croughton airbase in eastern England. She returned to the US three weeks after the accident and the US government invoked diplomatic immunity for her. She finally pleaded guilty in October, but the Biden administration recommended that she not return to the UK for the sentencing hearing. Instead, she participated virtually.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Harry,” Sacoolas said in a statement read by attorney Ben Cooper. She said that she was “deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.”
The suspended sentence means that as long as you don’t commit another crime in the next year, you won’t face jail time.
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Despite characterizing Sacoolas’ actions as “not far short of willfully dangerous driving,” Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said she reduced the sentence, which could have been a maximum of five years in prison, because Sacoolas pleaded guilty and exhibited good character prior to the crash. Cheema-Grubb also noted that the sentence cannot even be enforced while Sacoolas is in the US.
Dunn’s family also filed a civil lawsuit against Sacoolas in a Virginia federal court. In court documents, they claimed that Sacoolas may have been using his phone at the time of the accident, arguing that he may have tampered with his phone to hide data that would reveal this.
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His lawyer, in that case, noted that Sacoolas “took no action to remove the data from his phone” but switched SIM cards when he returned to the US because his old one was for the UK.
The United States had refused to extradite Sacoolas, meaning she could have evaded authorities in the criminal case, but Cheema-Grubb said it was the “calm and dignified persistence” of Dunn’s parents that convinced her to come forward. in court and plead guilty. The parents spent three years speaking with political figures in both countries in an effort to hold Sacoolas to account.
Charlotte Charles, left, the mother of Harry Dunn, and Tim Dunn, the father, speak to the media outside the Old Bailey, in London, Thursday, December 8, 2022. US citizen Anne Sacoolas, 45, received eight months of suspension. sentencing for causing death by dangerous driving in the death of 19-year-old Harry Dunn, who was killed in a collision with a car outside an airbase in eastern England in 2019. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
(The Associated Press)
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“As a family, we are determined that his death was not in vain and we are involved in a number of projects to try to find a silver lining in this tragedy and help others,” Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said in a statement. victim impact. statement. “That will be Harry’s legacy.”
Associated Press contributed to this report.
