The State Department rejected a request from London to hand over a U.S. diplomat’s wife who fled the U.K. last year after she was involved in a head-on car crash that killed a young British man, NPR reports. According to local police, Anne Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road when she hit 19-year-old Harry Dunn, riding a motorbike, on Aug. 27 in central England. A State Department spokesperson, who called it a “tragic” accident, said Sacoolas had “immunity from criminal jurisdiction.” The spokesperson said, “If the United States were to grant the U.K.’s extradition request, it would render the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity and would set an extraordinarily troubling precedent.”
On Friday, Dominic Raab, Britain’s foreign secretary, said he had spoken by phone with U.S. Ambassador Woody Johnson, to express his government’s “disappointment.” “We feel this amounts to a denial of justice, and we believe Anne Sacoolas should return to the U.K. We are now urgently considering our options,” Raab said. Sacoolas, whose husband reportedly worked at Royal Air Force base Croughton, returned to the U.S. in October after reportedly telling police that she had no plans to leave the country. After she arrived in the U.S., officials in Washington rejected an official request from London to extradite Sacoolas on a charge of causing death by dangerous driving.