Anne Sacoolas said she “drove like an American”, on the wrong side of the road, an inquest into the crash that killed a 19-year-old motorcyclist, Harry Dunn, has heard.
The US government employee declined to give live evidence at the inquest on Wednesday, providing two written statements that were read to the court.
In one she said: “I made a tragic mistake that I will live with every single day for the rest of my life. There is not a single day that goes by that Harry is not on my mind and I am deeply sorry for the pain that I have caused.”
The inquest into Dunn’s death, in 2019, heard that when Sacoolas was asked what she believed had caused the collision, she told Northamptonshire police: “I drove like an American and drove on the American side of the road.”
Responding to the statements, the Dunn family’s spokesperson, Radd Seiger, told the PA news agency: “We have heard most of that before. Why on earth is Sacoolas not in court to answer the court’s and the family’s questions?”
The US state department asserted diplomatic immunity on Sacoolas’s behalf and she was able to leave the UK 19 days after the fatal collision.
She appeared before a high court judge at the Old Bailey via video link in December 2022, where she pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving and was handed an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.
In one of her witness statements, Sacoolas said she “instinctively moved to the right side of the road” and was not aware she was on the wrong side “until after the collision”.
A statement from her lawyers in the US in September 2020 said Sacoolas had been driving on the wrong side for 20 seconds before she hit Dunn outside RAF Croughton, in Northamptonshire.
She told the inquest she had “hysterically flagged down a motorist” after the crash and “begged her to get help”.
The 45-year-old said she had not received any training on driving on UK roads after arriving in the country.
Sacoolas, who gave her employment details to police as an analyst for the US state department, rejected the coroner’s invitation to give live evidence to the inquest.
Her lawyer Ben Cooper KC previously told the court she had “provided everything she could to help this inquest” and offered to “answer any further questions”.
In one of her two witness statements, prepared for the inquest on Wednesday, Sacoolas said: “As I turned out of the exit from the Croughton air force base, taking a left turn, I instinctively moved to the right side of the road.
“I knew that the proper side of the road to drive was the left side, not the right side as I was accustomed to driving in the United States. My action was based on instinct and not recalling in that moment that I should have been driving on the other side.”
The inquest, which is due to conclude on Thursday, continues.
