LONDON—Anne Sacoolas, a U.S. government employee and the wife of a U.S. diplomat, has been sentenced in absentia to a suspended sentence of eight months in prison, after pleading guilty to careless driving for causing the death of motorcyclist Harry Dunn in August 2019.
Sacoolas, 45, appeared on Dec. 7 at the Central Criminal Court, also known as the Old Bailey, by videolink from her home in the United States to hear the sentence passed by Mrs. Justice Cheema-Grubb.
Cheema-Grubb said the U.S. government had written to the court saying that they were advising Sacoolas not to attend in person and said if she did so it may “place significant U.S. interests at risk.”
In November, Cheema-Grubb ordered Sacoolas to appear in person for sentencing and said her attendance would show “genuine remorse.”
Earlier this week Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said she was “absolutely fuming” after it emerged that the U.S. government had advised Sacoolas against attending the sentencing hearing in person.
Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road in her SUV when she collided head-on with the 19-year-old as he rode his motorcycle near RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire, a base used by the U.S. Air Force, where her husband was working.
Sacoolas, who has been described as an employee of the U.S. government, had diplomatic immunity asserted on her behalf and left the UK 19 days after the fatal crash.
In February 2021 a U.S. court heard she had been “employed by an intelligence agency in the U.S.” at the time of the collision and that was a factor in their decision to leave the UK.
Sacoolas didn’t react as Charles gave her victim impact statement, her voice breaking with emotion.
Charles said, “I made a promise to Harry when he was in the hospital that I would get him justice and a mother doesn’t break a promise to her son.”
She said, “He had his whole life ahead of him and it shatters my heart that it was taken away from him.”
Sacoolas Says She Is ‘Deeply Remorseful’
Ben Cooper, KC, representing Sacoolas, said she was “deeply remorseful” that her actions had caused Dunn’s death.He said she offered her “sincere apologies” to Dunn’s family and said she could not imagine the loss they had suffered.
The maximum sentence Sacoolas could have received for causing death by careless driving was five years in prison.
At that hearing the court heard Sacoolas was an “overseas national without experience of driving in this country.”
Atkinson said it had appeared she had driven out of the air base and onto the wrong side of the road for 250 metres before hitting Dunn.
Dunn’s family has been campaigning for the past three years for Sacoolas to be brought to justice and met with the then-Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, last year.
Truss, who resigned as prime minister on the same day Sacoolas pleaded guilty to the careless driving charge, raised the matter with the U.S. government in September 2021.
Earlier this week Charles said: “We had all come to expect that Anne Sacoolas would at last be doing the right thing and coming back as ordered to by the judge. But to hear now that her government employer has interfered with that only compounds our misery.”
She said, “It makes us even more determined than ever, when the sentence is passed, to make sure that the U.S. government never treats another British family so badly again.”
An extradition request by the UK government was turned down by the United States.
At October’s hearing Cheema-Grubb said Dunn had been a “young man lawfully riding his motorbike with proper care and attention.”
