US government employee who killed Harry Dunn to give inquest evidence remotely

The US State Department employee who was at the centre of a diplomatic scandal after killing teenage motorcyclist Harry Dunn in a crash is primed to give evidence remotely at his inquest.

A pre-inquest review hearing at Northampton’s Guildhall heard that Mr Dunn’s family have faced a “deafening silence” from Anne Sacoolas’s employer in their four-year fight for justice.

After a request from Northamptonshire Coroner Anne Pember, the PA news agency understands plans are in place for Sacoolas to attend the inquest remotely.

The family’s spokesman, Radd Seiger, told PA that Mr Dunn’s parents are still hopeful that she will appear in person for the substantive hearing now criminal proceedings have concluded.

The hearing heard that Sacoolas, who caused the 19-year-old’s death by careless driving in August 2019, had told police she had received “little or no” driving training in her short stint in the UK.

The barrister representing Mr Dunn’s family, Patrick Gibbs KC, criticised the “vacuum of information that surrounds all things American” – saying the US State Department “must have had” the answers they have been looking for and “just chosen not to give them”.

Mrs Pember said she will contact the Foreign Office to see what information the US government can provide in relation to Mr Dunn’s death.

Sacoolas was driving a Volvo on the wrong side of the road outside RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire on August 27 2019 before she crashed into the teenager’s bike.

The US State Department asserted diplomatic immunity on behalf of Sacoolas and she was able to leave the UK 19 days after the fatal collision.

The 45-year-old appeared before a High Court judge at the Old Bailey via video-link in December last year, where she pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving.

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb handed her an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.

All of this has been going on for four years and all there has been from the American entities is... a deafening silence

The Dunn family took their four-year campaign for justice to the US after the teenager’s death, which even led to a meeting with then-president Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington DC.

Making submissions on behalf of the family on Wednesday, Mr Gibbs said: “All of this has been going on for four years and all there has been from the American entities is… a deafening silence.”

He told the hearing there was a “vacuum of information that surrounds all things American”.

Mrs Pember told the hearing that if Sacoolas was employed by the US State Department at the time of the crash, she would designate it as an “interested person” in the inquest.

Sacoolas’s lawyer, Ben Cooper KC, said the US citizen is “keen to assist the inquest”.

The full inquest is expected to take place in June next year.