A firefighter named Xavier Gourmelon, who was on the scene of the car crash that killed Princess Diana in Paris on August 31, 1997, recently spoke about hearing her final words. Diana, who was in a car with her partner Dodi Fayed and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, was in the back seat when the car crashed into the Pont de l’Alma tunnel while being chased by paparazzi. The driver, Henri Paul, was found to be nearly four times over the legal limit for alcohol.
Gourmelon recalled that when he reached Diana, she was still conscious and asked, “Oh my God, what’s happened?” He tried to calm her down and assure her that they would take care of her, but she soon lost consciousness again. Despite being able to briefly revive her through CPR, Diana suffered another cardiac arrest after being transported to the hospital, from which she could not be resuscitated.
Initially, the emergency responders did not know Diana was in the car, and Gourmelon did not recognize her when he was speaking to her. Diana was agitated but quickly fell unconscious. Although she showed no visible injuries, she went into cardiac arrest while still in the wreckage, leading to her death after another cardiac arrest in the hospital.
Investigations into the crash attributed the blame to Henri Paul’s reckless driving and the pursuing paparazzi. A French investigation highlighted Paul’s high blood alcohol level, and a British inquest concluded the deaths resulted from “unlawful killing” due to grossly negligent driving.
