9 hours ago
Police Mishandled Fatal Crash Between American Driver and U.K. Teenager, Review Says
An independent review has sharply criticized the police in Britain over their handling of a 2019 road collision between an American driver and a teenage British motorcyclist in which the teenager died and the American subsequently fled the country on a claim of diplomatic immunity.
The review, a 118-page report published on Wednesday, said that the police should have arrested the American driver, Anne Sacoolas, at the scene and that officers later mishandled forensic evidence. It also found fault with a senior officer's social media posts and public remarks about the case, and with how officers interacted with the parents of the 19-year-old victim, Harry Dunn.
In publicizing the findings on Wednesday, the Northamptonshire Police, the force that was responsible for the case, apologized to Mr. Dunn's parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn.
'The picture which emerges is one of a force which has failed the family on a number of fronts,' Emma James, the Northamptonshire Police's head of protective services, said in a statement.
The fatal crash occurred as Ms. Sacoolas, a U.S. State Department employee whose husband worked for the American government at a British military base, was driving on the wrong side of the road near the village of Croughton, in central England, in August 2019. Mr. Dunn, whom her car struck, died later in a hospital.
The episode caused international friction when Ms. Sacoolas left Britain three weeks after the crash, claiming diplomatic immunity. Britain issued an extradition request for her return, but the U.S. government rejected it, arguing in a statement at the time that honoring it 'would render the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity and would set an extraordinarily troubling precedent.'
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