THE FAMILY OF British teenager Harry Dunn has described Donald Trump as “very graceful” after meeting with the US president at the White House.
But the teenager’s parents said they are no “further along” after being told that the US woman allegedly responsible for their son’s death would not return to the UK.
Anne Sacoolas left the UK after the crash in Northamptonshire which killed the 19-year-old in August.
Tim Dunn, Harry’s father, said: “I think the president was very graceful and spoke very well to us.”
“Obviously we’ve just met the president and we never thought we’d get this far but I don’t know whether we’re any further along.”
Harry’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said: “When he [President Trump] held my hand, I gripped it a lot tighter and I was honest with him and just said, as I said a while ago, ‘if it was your son you would be doing the same as us’.
“He actually gripped my hand a little bit tighter and said ‘Yes, I would be’.
“And that’s when he said he would try and look at this from a different angle.
“He seemed to understand that our grief has been locked in for seven weeks now on a case that should have been very, very clear-cut.”
“He listened to Charlotte very well – she spoke excellently to him and he was very understanding,” Harry’s father Tim Dunn said.
“I genuinely do think he will look to resolve this in a way that will help us,” he added.
Tim Dunn said they had turned down the chance to meet Anne Sacoolas at the White House: “We weren’t ready to meet her, it would have been too rushed.”
But he added that the meeting “didn’t feel like a stunt – they didn’t try and force it onto us”.
“But I don’t think it would be appropriate to meet her without therapists or mediators in the room,” Charlotte Charles said.
Their campaign has attracted interest either side of the Atlantic due to the chief suspect being the wife of a US diplomat stationed in the UK.
Sacoolas has previously said she is “terribly sorry” about the incident and that she had “no time to react” when she saw Harry Dunn’s motorbike following the incident near RAF Croughton on 27 August.
In a post on the Justice 4 Harry GoFundMe page, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn said of the meeting at the White House: “We are grateful for the invitation, which we hope represents a positive development in our fight for justice.
“Our priority, as any parent will understand, is justice for our child. We believe this can only be achieved if Anne Sacoolas returns to England and engages properly with the justice system, where she will be treated fairly in a proper investigation of what happened to our son on that day – an investigation that cannot happen without her co-operation.”
Friends tell each other the truth. If Britain and America are friends then we believe there should be no possibility of a citizen of one country hiding from justice in another while falsely claiming a privilege such as diplomatic immunity.
The family, who met Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in the UK last week, have also demanded an investigation over the Foreign Office’s (FCO) advice to Northamptonshire Police that Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity.
They are demanding to see all emails, messages and notes sent in relation to her immunity status.
Speaking in New York, family spokesman Radd Seiger said: “We want to conduct an investigation into the FCO’s decision to advise Northamptonshire Police that this lady had the benefit of diplomatic immunity.
“What we don’t know is whether somebody cocked up or whether they were put under pressure by the Americans to concede.”
If they are not happy with the documents, the family say they will then ask for a judge’s opinion on the lawfulness of the FCO’s decision.
“If we’re not satisfied, then we’ll go to a judicial review and ask a High Court judge to review it all,” Seiger added.
On Saturday, before the family left for the US, they received a letter from Raab, saying that Sacoolas no longer had immunity.
“The letter is worded very carefully, they’re not saying it’s just a change of heart – they are saying that it’s an evolution,” said Mr Seiger.
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