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Trump Says He'll Speak With U.S. Diplomat's Wife Involved in Fatal Accident

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his administration would look into doing "something" about a fatal crash in England that involved a U.S. diplomat's wife in August.

Speaking with reporters outside the White House, Trump said he'd discussed the matter with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a phone call recently, calling the incident a "terrible accident."

“We’re going to speak to her very shortly and see if we can do something,” Trump said. “It was an accident, a terrible accident.”

Harry Dunn, 19, was riding his motorcycle on Aug. 27 when he collided with a Volvo XC90 driving the wrong direction in Coughton, a small city in central England. It was revealed Saturday (Oct. 5) that the driver of the Volvo was the wife of a U.S. diplomat, who'd claimed diplomatic immunity and left the country before local police could interview her about the circumstances surrounding the accident.

Sky News identified the driver of the Volvo and wife of the U.S. diplomat to be Anne Sacoolas. Prosecutors in Britain have not yet said whether they would recommend charges against her.

“We’re going to speak with her and see what we can come up with, so that there can be some healing," Trump said. "There’s tremendous anger over it.It’s a terrible incident, there’s tremendous anger, and I understand the anger from the other side."

Trump said Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road at the time of the crash.

“That can happen, those are the opposite roads,” he said. “I won’t say it ever happened to me, but it did.”

Dunn's parents made a personal appeal to President Donald Trump in an interview with Sky News, asking him to do something about their son's death.

"President Trump, please listen," Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said. "We’re a family in ruin. We’re broken. We can’t grieve. Please, please, let her get back on a plane, come back to the U.K. . . . We could understand how she’s feeling, but more importantly, she needs to face justice, see what she’s done."

Diplomatic immunity is afforded to diplomats and their families living abroad, allowing them to avoid prosecution by local authorities for virtually any crime that may be committed in the foreign country. However, 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations allows for home countries to waive a diplomat's immunity in special circumstances, which is what British authorities are requesting the State Department do for the fatal Aug. 27 accident.


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