Harry Dunn: Coroner criticises US government over lack of driver training for Americans at base near where teenager died

Published

7 days ago

June 14, 2024

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The coroner in the inquest into the death of Harry Dunn has recommended better driver training for Americans at the RAF base near where the 19-year-old was killed.

Mr Dunn was hit by a Volvo driven by Anne Sacoolas in August 2019, after she drove on the wrong side of the B4031 in Northamptonshire while he was riding a motorbike.

He died in hospital the same day.

The coroner concluded Mr Dunn died as a result of a road traffic collision and issued three prevention of future death notices in a bid to stop similar tragedies occurring.

Analysis: Harry’s family still have questions over crash – but killer has remained in the shadows

Two prevention of death notices were sent to the UK’s Department of Health over the drugs paramedics carry and overworked ambulance services.

A third notice was issued to the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence around driver training at RAF Croughton.

Sacoolas, a US government employee, had been based at the RAF station – which is also used by US forces – at the time the crash happened.

Northamptonshire coroner Anne Pember criticised the US government for a lack of training provided to Sacoolas before the crash.

Harry Dunn’s family responds

Neither Sacoolas nor representatives from the US embassy attended the inquest – prompting the Dunn family spokesperson Radd Seiger to say the US government’s position was that “lives of UK citizens like Harry ultimately do not matter”.

He said: “It was not enough for them to kill Harry. It wasn’t enough for them to then kick Harry’s family in their darkest hour and seek to deny and delay the justice that they were entitled to.”

Speaking to Sky News after the inquest, Harry’s mother Charlotte Charles said the family is “relieved”, “proud” and “tired”.

Asked if she thinks she will ever get to see Sacoolas face to face, Ms Charles said the American “hasn’t got it in her”.

“She’s just a coward,” she said. “Sadly, that’s the only word that I can sum up. We’re disgusted. Disappointed doesn’t come anywhere close.”

Ms Charles criticised Sacoolas for “snubbing” not just Harry’s family, but the coroner too.

“It’s just extremely difficult for me to get my head around with her being a mum of three herself,” she added.

“She really could have had the chance to redeem herself a little bit this week and show us that she really did care.”

If she ever got the chance to have a conversation with Sacoolas, she said she would have wanted her to show remorse.

“We understand you made one horrific error in your driving that night,” she said.

“Your driving, we can forgive… running away, we can’t forgive. I couldn’t have done that.”

Mr Seiger also said Labour, if they get into power, has promised the family a public inquiry into how Sacoolas was able to leave the country with diplomatic immunity after causing Harry’s death.

“We won’t let [the US government] get away with it and we look forward to working with the next government to establish this public inquiry,” he said.

“We were all horrified as a nation to see how the US government treated Harry’s family. This must never happen again.

“The American national anthem ends ‘land of the free, home of the brave’. They haven’t demonstrated an ounce of bravery at all preferring to run, hide and obstruct.”

Anne Sacoolas’s witness statements

Evidence and two witness statements from Sacoolas were read out during the inquest after the US government employee rejected the coroner’s invitation to attend in person.

In one of the statements Sacoolas apologised for the “tragic mistake” she made on the day of the crash and said it was something that would live with her “every single day for the rest of my life”.

Harry Dunn’s family still have questions over fatal crash

Lisa Dowd

Midlands correspondent

@LisaSkyNews

It was October 2019. I had been made aware of a terrible crash which had killed a young motorcyclist called Harry Dunn a few months earlier.

The tip-off was Harry’s family were sure the person responsible worked for the US secret services, and she had left the country.

I was even given a name: Anne Sacoolas.

It was an unusual name. That night I did a search, and to my surprise she appeared on Facebook.

What spy would be on social media, I thought?

She said that when she turned out of RAF Croughton, taking a left turn, she instinctively moved to the right side of the road as she was “accustomed to driving in the US”.

She also told Northamptonshire Police in a voluntary interview two months after the crash that she was a “safe driver” but “drove like an American and drove on the American side of the road”.

The 45-year-old said she had not received any training on driving on UK roads after arriving in the country and after the crash “hysterically flagged down a motorist” and “begged her to get help”.

“There is not a single day that goes by that Harry is not on my mind, and I am deeply sorry for the pain that I have caused,” Sacoolas said in the statement.

Reacting to the statements, Mr Seiger said: “We have heard most of that before.

“Why on earth is Sacoolas not in court to answer the court’s and the family’s questions?”

Sacoolas left Britain 19 days after the crash after the US Department of State asserted diplomatic immunity on her behalf.

In December 2022, after a protracted battle for justice by the family, she appeared before a High Court judge at the Old Bailey via video link from the US, when she pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving.

Sacoolas was advised against attending her sentencing hearing by the state department, which prompted the Dunn family to say they were “horrified” the American government was “actively interfering in our criminal justice system”.

She was given an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for a year.

The inquest also heard from Mr Dunn’s twin brother Niall who referred to him as “an amazing person” who helped him when he found life hard-going.

In a video played to the inquest, he said: “I couldn’t have asked for a better brother, but beyond that, just a better person to just be forced to know”.

US

Donald Sutherland, Hunger Games and Kelly’s Heroes actor, dies

Published

12 hours ago

June 20, 2024

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Donald Sutherland, Hunger Games and Kelly's Heroes actor, dies

Donald Sutherland, who appeared in films including The Hunger Games and Kelly’s Heroes, has died at the age of 88.

His agency, CAA, said he died in Miami “after a long illness”.

The Canadian actor won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance in the mini-series Citizen X.

In 2017, he received an honorary Oscar.

His son, fellow actor Kiefer Sutherland, said “with a heavy heart” that his father had “passed away”.

“I personally think [he was] one of the most important actors in the history of film,” Kiefer Sutherland posted on X, adding that he was “never daunted by a role – good, bad or ugly”.

“He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.”

In the Hunger Games franchise, Donald Sutherland played President Snow alongside Jennifer Lawrence.

In Kelly’s Heroes he starred alongside Telly Savalas and Clint Eastwood as Sergeant Oddball – on a mission to steal gold from the Nazis.

“I love to work – I passionately love to work,” Sutherland told US talk show host Charlie Rose in 1998.

“I love to feel my hand fit into the glove of some other character. I feel a huge freedom – time stops for me. I’m not as crazy as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.”

His “breakthrough performances” were in 1967 movie The Dirty Dozen and MASH, CAA said.

He also took parts in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People and Oliver Stone’s JFK.

He is survived by his wife Francine Racette, sons Roeg, Rossif, Angus, and Kiefer, daughter Rachel, and four grandchildren.

“A private celebration of his life will be held by the family,” CAA said.

Born in St John, New Brunswick, on the east coast of Canada in July 1935, he was the son of a salesman and a mathematics teacher.

He started university in Toronto as an engineering student but switched to English and started acting in college productions.

US

Travis Scott arrested for ‘causing a disturbance while drunk and trespassing’

Published

17 hours ago

June 20, 2024

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Travis Scott arrested for 'causing a disturbance while drunk and trespassing'

Rapper Travis Scott has been arrested for “disorderly intoxication and trespassing”, police in the US have said.

Scott, who has two children with Kylie Jenner, was arrested for causing a “disturbance” on a charter boat at the Miami Beach Marina, where he “was drunk, and asked to leave multiple times”, the Miami Beach Police Department said.

Officers were called to the marina at 12.44 am on Thursday morning to reports of a disturbance, according to official records.

The 10-time Grammy Award nominee was reportedly getting off a charter boat when the owner of the boat asked him to leave, 7News Miami said on its website.

The force said officers found Scott, arguably one of the biggest hip-hop acts in the world, “standing by the dock yelling at the vessel occupants”, and while he complied with their instructions to begin with, he then ignored them, NBC, Sky’s US partner, said.

Officers could sense “a strong smell of alcohol coming from the defendant’s breath”, records showed.

Though he agreed to leave the dock after being threatened with arrest, he did not go quietly.

As he walked to the boardwalk, Scott “walked backwards yelling obscenities to the occupants of the vessel”, police said.

He left the marina, but returned five minutes later and was seen by officers walking back toward the vessel.

Scott spoke to a sergeant he had spoken to earlier and began yelling once again – “becoming erratic” and “disturbing the peace of the occupants of the marina and nearby residential buildings causing a public disturbance”, court documents said.

The 33-year-old musician was arrested at 1.17am and booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center at 4.35 am on a charge of alleged disorderly intoxication as well as trespassing property after warning.

He submitted a $650 (£512) bond – $500 (£394) for the trespass charge and $150 (£118) for disorderly intoxication, the Daily Mail said.

Scott, real name Jacques Bermon Webster II, has achieved four number-one hits on the US charts and is known for his energetic live shows and successful albums, including Astroworld.

He has two children with the socialite and media personality, Kylie Jenner, but the pair are no longer together.

His European tour, titled Circus Maximus, is due to start in The Netherlands next Friday and he is scheduled to play Manchester’s Co-Op Live venue on 13 July.

In 2021, 10 fans died in a crowd surge at his Astroworld festival in Houston, Texas, where he was born.

He did not face criminal charges over their deaths but remains involved in civil cases alleging that organisers were at fault.

Last year he scored his first UK number one album with Utopia, which has been streamed more than 50 billion times globally, NME said.

US

Texas: Video shows moment driver rams into two cyclists before driving over one of them

Published

24 hours ago

June 20, 2024

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Texas: Video shows moment driver rams into two cyclists before driving over one of them

The moment two cyclists were rear-ended by a drunk driver has been caught on camera by one of their colleagues.

Filmed on Monday, the video shows cyclists riding on the right-hand side of the road near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport when a white SUV rams them from behind.

Both riders are knocked to the ground – the SUV then veers to the left, before driving over one of the stricken cyclists.

Thomas Geppert, 69, was was taken to hospital with a severe laceration to his leg, the other victim, 65-year-old Deborah Eads was treated at the scene.

Local news outlets reported other cyclists riding with the pair then pursued the driver – 31-year-old Benjamin Hylander – to a nearby Shell petrol station and forced him to return to the scene of the crash.

According to a police report, Hylander told investigators he had a beer an hour before the crash, but a breathalyser test showed his blood alcohol concentration was over the minimum threshold of 0.15.

It added that officers also found six empty cans of Voodoo Ranger beer while searching his vehicle.

Hylander is now in custody and has been charged with two counts of intoxication assault with a vehicle, one count of accident involving injury, and one count of driving while intoxicated.

His employer is listed as American Airlines, who said on Wednesday that he would be withheld from service.