NoVA Woman Who Fled UK After Crash Could Face 'Virtual Trial'

NORTHERN VIRGINIA — A Northern Virginia woman could face a virtual trial in the case of a 19-year-old British man who was killed while riding his motorcycle when the woman allegedly struck him with her vehicle.

The woman, Anne Sacoolas, was allegedly driving on the wrong side of the road soon after leaving RAF Croughton, a military installation in Northamptonshire, England operated by the U.S. military primarily for use by the CIA.

The victim, Harry Dunn, was still alive after Sacoolas’ vehicle struck him, but he succumbed to his serious injuries a short while later at a nearby hospital.

Sacoolas’ vehicle, a British Volvo SUV, was allegedly owned by her husband Jonathan Sacoolas who reportedly worked at RAF Croughton, a former British air force base about 20 miles north of Oxford.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said last Saturday that Sacoolas, who had moved to England with her husband and children only three weeks before the Aug. 27, 2019 crash that killed Dunn, could face a virtual trial.

Given that “the US has not agreed to extradition,” Raab told BBC radio that “the path is clear for the legal authorities in the U.K. to approach Anne Sacoolas’ lawyers — without any problem from the US government — to see whether some kind of virtual trial or process could allow some accountability,” Agence France-Presse reported.

The identity of the employer of Anne Sacoolas and her husband remains unclear. Sacoolas has been referred to as a “diplomat’s wife” in numerous news articles.

However, during a court hearing in February in a civil case brought against Sacoolas in Virginia, Sacoolas’s lawyer, John McGavin, said she worked for a U.S. "intelligence agency" and that this had been "a factor" in her decision to leave the U.K. after the collision.

A moment later in the court hearing, McGavin corrected himself, saying she worked for the U.S. State Department, the BBC reported.

Prior to leaving on their three-year assignment at RAF Croughton, the Sacoolas family reportedly lived in Vienna. The offices of many U.S. intelligence agencies are scattered across Northern Virginia. The CIA's headquarters in Langley are located about five miles north of Vienna on Route 123.

Around Sept. 15, 2019, less than three weeks after the crash that killed Dunn, Sacoolas and her family reportedly left the country on a military flight to avoid prosecution. Upon returning to Northern Virginia, Sacoolas, a native of Aiken, South Carolina, and her family rented a house in Herndon.

In August 2019, before she departed the U.K., local police in England reportedly interviewed Sacoolas at the scene of the crash that killed Dunn. She cooperated with police and passed a breathalyzer test, the police said.

Northamptonshire’s chief constable told reporters that police officers visited Sacoolas on Aug. 28, 2019, the day after the crash, where she once again cooperated with the investigation. During this visit, though, diplomatic immunity for Sacoolas was mentioned, the chief constable said.

In December 2019, after the Sacoolas family had left the country, British prosecutors announced that Sacoolas would be charged with causing death by dangerous driving and that it was starting extradition proceedings against her. In January 2020, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused the extradition request.

Sacoolas has stated she will not return to the U.K. to stand trial out of concern she will not receive fair treatment both from the press and the local community.

When they realized Sacoolas would not face justice in the U.K., Dunn’s parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, filed a lawsuit in September 2020 against Sacoolas and her husband Jonathan in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. Dunn’s parents are seeking both compensatory and punitive damages against Anne and Jonathan Sacoolas. The lawsuit has been allowed to move forward by the federal judge overseeing the case, and it is currently in discovery phase.

“After Defendant Anne Sacoolas promised the British police that she would cooperate in their investigation, she was permitted to return to her home in Croughton,” the Dunn family’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. “Despite her promise, on or about September 15, 2019 Defendant Anne Sacoolas departed the United Kingdom, without notifying the local police and refused to return.”

“Sacoolas’ departure and subsequent refusal to return caused public outrage in both the United Kingdom and the United States,” the lawyers wrote.