Harry Dunn's Mom 'Bewildered' by Report's Finds on His Death

It's been 2 1/2 years since a sentence was handed down in the case of Harry Dunn, the UK teen on a motorcycle who was killed by an American diplomat's wife in a 2019 road accident; now a new independent review is slamming local authorities for their handling of the case. Per the New York Times, the 118-page report published on Wednesday cited a litany of issues with how the Northamptonshire Police dealt with the case—with the main sticking point being that cops should have taken Anne Sacoolas, who'd been driving on the wrong side of the road when she hit 19-year-old Dunn, into custody at the scene instead of letting her leave with her two young children.

The review notes that Sacoolas wasn't arrested because she was said to be in a state of shock and police didn't find it necessary at the time, per the BBC. Sacoolas and her husband, a US intelligence officer, took off back to the US not long after the accident, and American authorities refused to extradite her to the UK for her trial, which she attended virtually; she entered a guilty plea for careless driving and received an eight-month suspended sentence, avoiding jail time. The new review also says that police officers mishandled forensic evidence and had shoddy communication with Dunn's parents, and that a senior officer's social media posts and remarks to the press about the case were insensitive.

"The picture which emerges is one of a force which has failed the family on a number of fronts," Emma James, the police force's head of protective services, said in a statement. Charlotte Charles, Dunn's mother, says she's "bewildered that the most fundamental of policing was not carried out" while her son was "dying in that ditch," per the BBC. She added, "My anger is as high as it probably was in the beginning." Charles did have kind words for the unnamed officer in charge of the case, who she said showed "genuine care and commitment when others above her fell short." A rep for the Dunn family similarly slammed the "grave errors" made but lauded the police force for "putting transparency first," per the Guardian. (More Harry Dunn stories.)