The mother of Harry Dunn had said an apology from the US diplomat’s wife being treated as a suspect in the investigation into her son’s death “just doesn’t cut it”.
In a statement released on Friday, Sacoolas said she wanted to meet Harry’s family in order to “express her deepest sympathies and apologies”, however the teenager’s mother Charlotte Charles told Sky News “that’s not really quite enough”.
Charles told Sky News: “My opinion on Anne Sacoolas now wanting to come forward and say sorry - to be perfectly honest, yes it’s the start of some closure for our family.
“Having said that, as it’s nearly seven weeks now since we lost our boy, sorry just doesn’t cut it.
“That’s not really quite enough. But I’m still really open to meeting her, as are the rest of us. I can’t promise what I would or wouldn’t say, but I certainly wouldn’t be aggressive.”
Nineteen-year-old Harry was killed on August 27 when his motorbike was involved in a collision with a car, believed to have been driven by Sacoolas, 43, near RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire.
The US national told
police she had no intention of leaving the
UK after the crash, however left the country with her family after being granted diplomatic immunity. Harry’s family were informed via a letter from Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on Saturday that both the US and UK authorities were no longer of the opinion that diplomatic immunity was invalid as Sacoolas had returned home.
Speaking on Saturday Sacoolas’s legal representative Amy Jeffress, from the law firm Arnold and Porter, said: “Anne is devastated by this tragic accident.
“No loss compares to the death of a child and Anne extends her deepest sympathy to Harry Dunn’s family.”
She also claimed that elements of media reports about the incident had been “inaccurate”, and said Sacoolas would “continue to cooperate with the investigation”.
Harry’s parents are reportedly flying to the US today, where they plan to “put pressure on the US administration to do the right thing”.
His father Tim Dunn added: “So after thinking about the letter, obviously we were right from the start. So here we are, about to get on the plane at Heathrow to go to America.
“Still apprehensive because, you know, this thing has been up and down, up and down.
“Hopefully we’ll get the answers we are seeking.”
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Priti Patel played down suggestions that Sacoolas could be extradited from the
United States over Harry’s death.
Asked on BBC1′s The Andrew Marr Show whether Sacoolas could now be extradited to the UK, Patel said: “The foreign secretary has been working with his
American counterpart, he has been in touch with the US administration on this.
“It very much seems that the lady in question wants to start co-operating with the discussions and the investigations and I think that we should support that.
“We need to ensure that justice is done but obviously that co-operation with this investigation takes place. That is absolutely right.”