The parents of a British motorcyclist killed in a crash involving an American diplomat's wife declined to meet with her Tuesday at the White House — and President Donald Trump admitted Wednesday that "unfortunately, when we had everybody together, they decided not to meet."
"We met right here in this area," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office of his conversation with Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, parents of Harry Dunn, 19, who was killed in an Aug. 27 crash in the United Kingdom involving Anne Sacoolas.
Trump said he told Dunn's parents that Sacoolas, 42, was in the next room. Her husband is a U.S. intelligence officer stationed in the United Kingdom.
Sacoolas, now back in the U.S. and claiming diplomatic immunity, has admitted to driving on the wrong side of the street near a British military base used by the Air Force.
Dunn's parents were invited to the White House after traveling to the U.S. to try to persuade Sacoolas to return to Britain.
"I offered to bring the person in question in — and they weren't ready for it," President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "But I did offer."
But Radd Seiger, a lawyer for Dunn's parents, said Tuesday that his clients weren't ready to meet Sacoolas after talking with Trump.
"After the pleasantries and greetings," Seiger told BBC News, Trump "said he had Mrs. Sacoolas in the next room.
"I thought he was just going to bring her in," Seiger added. "That's when I quite forcefully said: 'No, that's not happening, Mr. President. These good people are not ready.'"
Charles told reporters afterward that they felt meeting Sacoolas was "not appropriate" without therapists and mediators present, the Independent reports.
Tim Dunn said the couple was not "ready to meet her" and any meeting "would have been too rushed."
"It's not what we wanted," he said. "We wanted a meeting with her in the U.K."
President Trump said Wednesday: "They did not want to meet with the person in question, but we had a very good meeting."
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