US diplomat's wife gets suspended jail term for UK crash

A US diplomat's wife, Anne Sacoolas, has been given an eight-month suspended prison sentence in the United Kingdom on Thursday for causing the death of teenage motorcyclist Harry Dunn.

Sacoolas admitted in October she was driving on the wrong side of the road when she hit the 19-year-old motorcyclist outside a US military base in England.

She left the country days after the accident in 2019, claiming diplomatic immunity from criminal prosecution.

The sentencing follows a three-year campaign by Dunn's family, who met with politicians on both sides of the Atlantic in a campaign to get Sacoolas to face British justice.

"As a family we are determined that his death will not have been in vain and we are involved in a number of projects to try to find some silver lining in this tragedy and to help others,'' Dunn's mother Charlotte Charles said.

The US refused to extradite her and she appeared in court via a video link from the US.

'Deliberately dangerous driving'

Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Sacoolas' actions were "not far short of deliberately dangerous driving."

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson said Sacoolas told police she was on what she called "the American side" of the road when the collision occurred.

Cheema-Grubb however took Sacoolas' guilty plea into account when she decided against imposing a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.

Sacoolas was also disqualified from driving for 12 months.

In a statement from Sacoolas, read out by her lawyer, she said that she was "deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.''

She added, "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about Harry."

The suspended sentence means that Sacoolas faces jail if she commits another offense within a year though the judge acknowledged the sentence could not be enforced if she remains in the US.

She settled a civil lawsuit filed by Dunn's family in 2021. 

lo/aw (AP, Reuters)