The parents of a teenage motorcyclist who died in a road accident have appealed to US President Donald Trump to intervene, after the wife of an American diplomat suspected in the case left the country.
In an emotional plea, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn asked Trump to help bring justice for the death of their 19-year-old son, Harry Dunn, calling on authorities to waive her diplomatic immunity.
“Just to look and listen to what has happened and to try to see it from our point of view and our heartache, and hopefully he can help with bringing her back to the UK, so we can get on and do our stuff, and do the justice and help us to start grieving again,” Dunn told CNN’s New Day when asked what his message was for Trump.
The accident is growing into an international dispute, drawing in UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has promised to talk to the US ambassador as well as Trump if necessary. Johnson named the suspect as 42-year-old Anne Sacoolas on Monday.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and his US counterpart Mike Pompeo discussed Dunn’s “tragic death” in a phone call on Monday, according to a US State Department readout, while the US’ ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, repeated condolences to Dunn’s friends and family.
Police say the suspect was driving on the wrong side of the road when the suspect’s car collided with Harry Dunn.
Sacoolas was originally cooperating in the case, police have said, but she left the country despite assuring them she would remain in the UK.
CNN’s attempts to contact Sacoolas have been unsuccessful.
‘We’re completely broken’
Harry Dunn’s mother broke down in tears as she said she hoped the suspect knew of her family’s suffering.
“You know we’re six weeks on, and even though this supposed diplomatic immunity has put a cloak around her, protected her, surely as a human and a mum herself, I just want her to know that we’re completely broken. She’s broken our family. We’ve all got to try and find another way of living our lives. We don’t know where to start,” Charlotte Charles said.
She appealed to Sacoolas to come forward and make contact with her family.
“We’ve gone from it being an open and closed pretty straightforward case to it being now the complete opposite. We don’t know how she’s feeling, we don’t know whether she’s remorseful, whether she’s just managing to ignore it, get on with her life. So anything, any contact from her would be a crumb of hope.”
Charles said that investigators had made it “very clear” what had happened on August 27, when Dunn was killed in Northamptonshire in central England, which is home to a Royal Air Force station controlled by the US Air Force.
She said investigators had told her that CCTV footage showed the driver pulling out on the wrong side of the road and then traveling 350 to 400 yards.
“The first person she came across was our boy Harry,” she said, adding that there was no chance of avoiding one other. “He certainly had no chance of avoiding her.”
Charles told CNN in an earlier interview that her family was raising money through a GoFundMe page called Justice 4 Harry so that they could visit Washington, where they hoped to speak with the US President.
Under the 1961 Vienna Convention, diplomats and their family members are typically immune from prosecution in their host country.
The US State Department told CNN Saturday that diplomatic immunity is “rarely waived.”
“Any questions regarding a waiver of immunity with regard to our diplomats and their family members overseas in a case like this receive intense attention at senior levels and are considered carefully given the global impact such decisions carry,” it added.
The US Embassy in London refused to comment on the identity of the suspect for privacy and security reasons.
CNN’s Stephanie Halasz and Richard A. Greene contributed to this report.
