Harry Dunn family to meet with Northamptonshire Police over failings in handling of his case
Harry was 19 when he died outside RAF Croughton in 2019.
Northamptonshire Police are to present a report on failures in the case of Harry Dunn to his family today.
The family from Charlton near Banbury tell us they understand some of the inquiry findings are likely to be rolled out nationally.
Harry was killed outside RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire in 2019, by US woman Anne Sacoolas driving on the wrong side of the road.
Despite fleeing the country, she was found guilty of causing his death when she appeared in court via video link in October 2021.
She pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving and was sentenced to eight months imprisonment suspended for 12 months and was disqualified from driving for 12 months.
"It's not acceptable for anyone to have to hear that that your loved one didn't matter."
Harry's mum Charlotte Charles received an MBE at the weekend in the King's Birthday Honours, for her road safety campaigning in Harry's name.
Charlotte tells us she felt let down by the force at the start of the case:
"It was still very much, you have got a less than 1% chance of getting justice, basically drop it. And that doesn't scream anything but, your son doesn't matter. It's not acceptable for anyone to have to hear that that your loved one didn't matter."
Charlotte says one of the other main ways they felt failed, was the lack of communication from police about his case.
She says the family found out Anne Sacoolas had fled the country from locals in the community at Harry's funeral:
"The biggest thing for me at the beginning was that they didn't inform us Anne Sacoolas had fled the country we found out through hearsay. Because we are a very small community in our area and there a lot of people who work at RAF Croughton.
"People were coming to us and saying things along the lines of, 'I hear that she's gone' and we were like, 'what do you mean, she's gone?' And she'd actually fled the country three days before Harry's funeral.
After Harry's death the family became aware of other incident like his involving US citizens and have campaigned for change:
"There were many, many other deaths and fatal injury, serious injuries, life changing injuries that had been caused by American drivers in and around their US bases in England and the UK. So I think if you've got one of those RAF bases on your patch, you need to have protocols in place."
Recommendations thought to have national rollout
Charlotte says the inquiry has never been about berating the police, but to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to another family:
"As we're aware at the moment (there are) quite a considerable amount of recommendations. So we don't know what they are yet. We're yet to find out, but we are told that some of them are actually nationwide."
At the time of Harry's death the Police Chief Constable of Northamptonshire Police is the now disgraced Nick Adderley who was found to have lied about his achievements and who was dismissed for gross misconduct by the force in 2024.
Charlotte says from the beginning she felt dismissed by him:
"He always tried to stop us from doing anything, you know, he was the one that was basically putting us off running forward with the campaign.
"And later on when he realised that we were going ahead with going to the media that we were running ahead with trying to obtain justice, he would then try and come along and be the person to to speak for us, but actually behind the scenes he wasn't supportive of us at all."
Northamptonshire Police have been approached for comment.