Anne Sacoolas has finally been sentenced over the road death of Harry Dunn but will avoid jail.
His family watched on in the Old Bailey as the American was handed an eight-month suspended sentence, more than three years after the teenager was killed.
The 45-year-old previously pleaded guilty to causing his death by careless driving when she struck his motorcycle on August 27, 2019.
Sacoolas has admitted she was driving on the wrong side of the road with her children in the back seat when she collided with the 19-year-old.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC told the court how she cried at the scene and admitted immediately to Northamptonshire Police officers she had ‘made a mistake’ and was ‘so stupid’.
Sacoolas was able to leave the UK 19 days after the incident and had diplomatic immunity asserted on her behalf by her government.
It was originally claimed she was in the country as the wife of a diplomat but it later emerged she worked for an intelligence agency herself too.
Interviewed by police after she returned to the US, Sacoolas said Mr Dunn ‘made a comment that he was driving on his side of the road’ as he lay dying and asked her for help.
She continued: ‘It was when I got my kids to the side of the road that I realised what happened.
‘It wasn’t until that point that I realised that I had driven on the American side of the road versus UK side.’
The court was told Sacoolas had driven the route on five previous occasions and had been in the country since July.
She travelled 350 metres in 26 seconds in the wrong lane after turning from the air base and missed road signs which should have alerted her to her error.
Successive governments in Washington DC have advised her not to comply with requests to return to the UK for court proceedings.
An extradition request issued by the British government has been flatly rejected despite public and private appeals for her immunity to be waived from UK officials and the deceased’s family.
Mr Dunn was rushed to hospital from where he was hit outside RAF Croughton, a major US military communications base, but died of his injuries a couple of hours later.
Reading a statement in court, Harry Dunn’s mother Charlotte Charles said it ‘haunts me to my core’ that she didn’t make it to the ward in time to say goodbye to him.
She continued: ‘My job is to comfort my children and I wasn’t there for Harry to comfort him in what must have been an awful and painful, slow death, particularly as he lay on the side of the road waiting for an ambulance bleeding to death.
‘I beat myself up over and over again and wish I had left work earlier so that I could have gotten to him in time.
‘If I had left work on time that night, I would have been able to delay him leaving the house, so that he wouldn’t have been travelling along the same road as Anne Sacoolas.’
The sentencing judge, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb paid tribute to Mr Dunn’s family, saying: ‘There is no doubt that the calm and dignified persistence of these parents and the family of that young man has led through three years of heartbreak and effort to your appearance before this court and the opportunity for you to acknowledge your guilt of a crime.’
In a statement read by her lawyer Ben Cooper KC, Sacoolas said she was ‘deeply sorry for the pain I have caused’.
He said his client ‘did not ask’ for diplomatic immunity and had no say in the refusal of a Home Office extradition request.
Sacoolas has been subjected to death threats and has had to relocate several times since 2019, he told the Old Bailey.
Continuing reading a statement on behalf of the defendant, Sacoolas said she feels ‘regret every single day’, adding: ‘There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Harry.’
Mr Cooper said the defendant left the country on a commercial flight as her family were redeployed on the decision of her government.
The complex case has been heard entirely remotely but Mr Dunn’s family hoped Sacoolas would travel to London to be sentenced.
They said it was ‘incredibly disappointing’ that she opted to be told of her punishment via video-link from the US.
The judge told the Old Bailey that it was only in recent weeks that Sacoolas’ lawyers made it clear for the first time that she was expressly told not to travel to the UK by her US government employer.
A previous application for proceedings to continue over video-link only made reference to ‘personal security’ concerns, which were comprehensively addressed by the police in response.
Lawyers acting on behalf of Sacoolas told the judge in November: ‘The US government does not in any way support [Sacoolas] appearing in person at this hearing.
‘In fact her US government employer has advised her not to return to UK in person because her return could put significant US interests at risk.’
The judge explained she reluctantly granted the request, noting that an arrest warrant ‘would have been close to an empty gesture’ and that it ‘would have been perverse’ to refuse a video link in these circumstances.
At an earlier hearing, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said she would compel Sacoolas to attend in person but said it would provide ‘weighty evidence’ of ‘genuine remorse’
A court official confirmed on Tuesday that the judge had approved a renewed application from her government employer to continue the hearing over video-link.
Suspending the eight-month sentence for a period of 12 months, the judge said there was no realistic prospect of passing a community order that could be monitored from across the Atlantic.
She said Sacoolas’ conduct on the night of Mr Dunn’s death was ‘not far short of deliberately dangerous driving’, not a ‘momentary lapse of concentration’, but acknowledged her ‘genuine remorse’.
It was also disclosed that the defendant had received two fines for minor driving breaches in 1997 and 2006 but was ‘of good character’.
Before the sentencing Mrs Charles said she was ‘absolutely fuming’ that the US government had advised her not to attend court on Thursday.
Mrs Charles added: ‘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.
‘It makes us even more determined than ever, when the sentence is passed, to make sure that the US government never treats another British family so badly again.’
This is a breaking news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.
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