The family of a United Kingdom teenager filed a wrongful death lawsuit Wednesday against Anne Sacoolas and her husband, U.S. diplomat Jonathan Sacoolas, in U.S. federal court.
Anne Sacoolas was criminally charged with 19-year-old Harry Dunn's death in Britain in December 2019, but had left the country months earlier and has refused to return. So Dunn's family took the legal fight to Virginia, where the Sacoolas family now lives.
Anne Sacoolas has admitted to killing Dunn on Aug. 27, 2019, when she was driving her SUV on the wrong side of the street outside a Royal Air Force base where Jonathan worked in Croughton, about 70 miles northwest of London.
She hit Dunn, who was driving a motorcycle, head-on and the young man died later that day. She claimed diplomatic immunity and left Britain in mid-September of 2019. U.S. officials have rejected subsequent U.K. attempts to force her to stand trial, including an official extradition request.
Lawyers for Anne Sacoolas have called Dunn's death a "terrible but unintentional accident."
The Dunn family civil lawsuit says that Sacoolas did not help the still-breathing Dunn after plowing into him and never called an ambulance. Instead, the lawsuit says, a passerby reported the emergency.
"(Sacoolas) left Harry to suffer as he lay face down on the side of the road, afraid of dying, fully conscious with multiple broken bones, including open fractures on both legs and both arms, and internal injuries," the suit reads.
The Dunn family is seeking financial damages.
The case has created diplomatic tension between the U.K. and its former colony, with Interpol issuing a "red notice" for Anne Sacoolas and a British MP calling for her to be tried in absentia.
