‘They are going to fix you, be calm’: Father of Harry Dunn reveals his last words to his dying 19-year-old son after fireball bike smash ’caused by US diplomat’s wife’
- Tim Dunn said: ‘I could see broken bones coming out of his arms, but he spoke’
- ‘I called over and said: ‘Harry, it’s your dad, they are going to fix you, be calm’
- Mr Dunn told 19-year-old son he would be sedated because it was ‘for the best’
- US citizen Anne Sacoolas, 42, allegedly drove into Harry in Northamptonshire
- She ‘fled’ the UK after Harry’s death after he was hit by car on wrong side of road
The father of Harry Dunn has told of the final words he said to his teenage son as he lay fatally injured after being hit by a car.
Tim Dunn, who had reached the scene of the accident when the 19-year-old was still alive, said: ‘I could see broken bones coming out of his arms, but he was talking.
‘I called over and said: ‘Harry, it’s your dad, they are going to fix you, be calm.’
‘He stopped moaning and calmed then,’ he told US news channel CBS, ‘and a couple of minutes later one of the doctors said they needed to sedate him because he was having trouble breathing.’
Scroll for video
Tim Dunn (pictured), who had reached the scene of the accident when the 19-year-old was still alive, said: ‘I could see broken bones coming out of his arms, but he was talking
Mr Dunn told his son (pictured with mother Charlotte) he would be sedated because it was ‘for the best’ and said he would see him in hospital
Q&A
Can Anne Sacoolas be extradited to the UK?
Discussions are underway between the Crown Prosecution Service and Northamptonshire Police. If police submit a file of evidence meeting the US extradition threshold, she could be extradited to face justice here.
Anne Sacoolas
The deal between the US and the UK is set out in the Extradition Act 2003.
The CPS must first send a request to the US State Department via the British Embassy in Washington.
The critical test is that prosecutors must provide ‘such information as would provide a reasonable basis to believe that the person sought committed the offence for which extradition is requested’.
The US Constitution states that suspects cannot be arrested unless the authorities have ‘probable cause’ for their action.
Is it unprecedented?
The circumstances of the case may be unusual but extradition requests to the US are not uncommon.
An independent review, which was led by the former Court of Appeal judge Sir Scott Baker into extradition between the two countries, revealed in 2011 that there were 54 requests from the UK to the US between January 2004 and July 2011 and none were refused.
What happens next?
Detectives have given prosecutors an initial file showing their progress in the investigation. But they have yet to submit a full file of evidence.
Once a file is submitted, prosecutors will consider whether criminal charges can be brought and whether there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and whether it is in the public interest to bring charges.
If the evidence in this case passes that test, an extradition request could be made to the US for her arrest.
Mr Dunn told his son he would be sedated because it was ‘for the best’ and said he would see him in hospital.
These were the last words between father and son because Harry never woke up.
It is exactly seven weeks since US citizen Anne Sacoolas allegedly drove on the wrong side of the road outside RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire and collided with Harry’s motorbike.
The 42-year-old, whose husband Jonathan worked as US intelligence official at the base, claimed diplomatic immunity and left the UK.
After flying to the US, Harry’s parents are on a campaign to get her to return.
Speaking at a press conference in New York, his mother Charlotte Charles said: ‘She needs to do the right thing and come back and face what she has done. Face our family. Face the UK justice system.’
Mrs Charles added: ‘She needs to set an example to her own children. You can’t run away from something this terrible.
‘CCTV shows that she was driving on the wrong side of the road, then you see Harry’s headlight over the brow of the hill and the next you see is a fireball when his bike went up.’
Mrs Sacoolas’s lawyers released a statement at the weekend describing the death of Harry as a ‘tragic accident’.
They said Mrs Sacoolas wants to meet his family so that she can ‘express her deepest sympathies and apologies’.
But it stopped short of offering to help their quest for justice by returning to the UK.
Mrs Charles said: ‘We feel that statement should have come out right from the beginning, instead of getting on a plane and running home.
‘We’ve heard her statement but we don’t know how sincere it was. Just hearing it from a statement is a little too little too late I’m afraid.
‘To have to go through all this, to get an apology, just in writing, it’s just wrong. We promised Harry when we lost him that night in the hospital that we would make sure justice was done.’
Breaking down in tears, Mrs Charles added: ‘I have a feeling at the pit of my tummy every morning knowing I have lost a child – telling us that something is not right. All of our grief has gone on hold.’
Harry Dunn’s mother Charolotte broke down as she told a press conference in New York that Anne Sacoolas, the American woman suspected of causing her son’s death, should be brought back to the UK to face justice
Asked what he would say to US President Donald Trump if he got the chance to meet him, Mr Dunn said: ‘I would say to him as a man, as a father, how could you let this happen.
‘If you are a father and your child died surely you’d want that person to own up and take responsibility for their actions.’
On Saturday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab wrote to Harry’s family saying that Mrs Sacoolas no longer had diplomatic immunity from potential prosecution because her husband Jonathan had left his posting at the RAF base.
If Northamptonshire Police submit a file of evidence which meets the US extradition threshold, she could be extradited to face justice here.