Harry crash suspect ‘to face UK police in days’
DETECTIVES probing the death of teenage motorcyclist Harry Dunn plan to interview chief suspect Anne Sacoolas in the US within 10 days.
The revelation came as Nick Adderley, the Chief Constable of Northamptonshire, insisted his officers would fly out to see Mrs Sacoolas as soon as they get visas.
The police boss spoke amid growing tension between Harry’s parents, Tim Dunn and Charlotte Charles, and UK authorities who failed to stop the intelligence officer’s wife leaving the country.
He urged a spokesman for 19-year-old Harry’s family to “show constraint” after claims they were “as angry as they have been” and that they had lost all faith in both the police and the Foreign Office.
Fuel was added to the simmering row after shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry met Harry’s parents and voiced suspicions over the way the investigation had been handled, saying she “smelt a rat”.
Following the meeting in her Westminster office, she said she worried that the UK Government had been “pulling punches” in past dealings with Washington.
Rat
Ms Thornberry added: “It’s as though we’re scared of upsetting Donald Trump. There are times when you just have to stand up for British citizens.”
She also accused the Foreign
Office of “running around like headless chickens” in the aftermath of the fatal crash outside RAF Croughton, an air base leased to US intelligence, in August.
Vowing to do some “digging” on the family’s behalf, she added: “We smell a rat and we need to find out what really happened.”
Family spokesman Radd Seiger said the support shown by Ms Thornberry was “really, really wonderful” and that the family felt they were being listened to at last.
However in a rare public briefing on an active inquiry, Mr Adderley said: “This investigation has not stalled, it has not slowed down.
“The suspect not being in the country clearly frustrates the investigation but it does not stop it.”
He added: “I want to make the point that we have fast-tracked the investigation – the average time to investigate a road traffic collision is 16 weeks. We have got the file almost ready for the CPS to make a decision and we have done that in little over eight weeks.
“We can’t complete that file, of course, until we get the account from the suspect, which is what we are working towards, hopefully in the next 10 days.”
Accident
Mr Adderley said Mrs Sacoolas, a 42-year-old mother of three, wanted to be personally interviewed by his officers so they could see the effect the accident had on her.
He added: “I would not change the way the police have dealt with this to date.”