U.K. asks envoy’s wife in crash to return

LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Monday for the wife of a U.S. diplomat involved in a crash that killed a teenager to return to Britain, saying he would ask President Donald Trump to intervene if the impasse was not resolved through diplomatic channels.

Johnson’s statement — in which he also disclosed the woman’s identity — aggravated tensions in a trans-Atlantic relationship that started fraying after Trump feuded publicly with other British officials and denounced Britain’s ambassador to Washington, forcing him to give up his post.

“I do not think that it can be right to use the process of diplomatic immunity for this type of purpose,” Johnson said in an interview with the BBC on Monday, “and I hope that Anne Sacoolas will come back and will engage properly with the processes of laws that carried out in this country.”

Johnson added that, if necessary, he would raise the issue “personally with the White House.”

British authorities have been pressing the United States to reconsider its refusal to intervene in an investigation of the crash on Aug. 27, after Sacoolas, an American citizen who has diplomatic immunity, left Britain despite telling the police that she had no plans to do so.

Harry Dunn, 19, was killed after his motorcycle collided with a car traveling in the opposite direction in Brackley, a town about 60 miles northeast of London that is near RAF Croughton, a Royal Air Force base that is the site of a U.S. Air Force communication station.

Police have said that Sacoolas, 42, was driving on the wrong side of the road when the crash occurred and that their investigation has been complicated by the fact that she left the country.