A chic dinner on the Ritz in Paris. A post-midnight drive previous town's floodlit treasures. After which, tragedy.
The story of Princess Diana's demise at age 36 in that catastrophic crash in a Paris visitors tunnel continues to shock, even after a quarter-century.
That is an account of Diana's closing hours within the French capital.
Princess Diana's life in photos
Eiffel Tower probably one of many final issues she ever noticed
Coming into the Pont de l'Alma visitors tunnel at night time, one of many final belongings you see is the floodlit Eiffel Tower.
Its iron latticework shimmering like lace in opposition to a black sky, it probably was one of many final issues Princess Diana ever noticed.
The tower's lights go off each night time at 1am. By that point on Sunday, August 31, a dying Diana lay trapped in a crumpled wreck of a Mercedes, with rescuers attempting frantically to deal with her whereas they minimize by the steel roof.
The brief trip to the tunnel from the Ritz Resort had been a shocking one, with a view of town's different floodlit treasures: the obelisk on the Place de la Concorde, the Arc de Triomphe off to the fitting, the gold-domed Resort des Invalides throughout the river to the left.
4 folks had been within the automobile: a driver and a bodyguard in entrance, the princess and her boyfriend in again. Behind them — it is not clear how far — had been a number of bikes and maybe two vehicles bearing paparazzi.
Approaching the tunnel alongside the Seine River, the shining tower was simply to the left. Even by the tinted home windows of a luxurious automobile, it will've been arduous to not look.
Seconds later, there was an enormous crash — witnesses stated it was like an explosion. It will quickly reverberate world wide, however for a couple of minutes within the nonetheless night time, there was solely the insistent blare of a automobile horn set off by the driving force's slumped physique, after which the click of digital camera shutters.
For the princess, after the spectacular metropolis lights, there was solely blackness.
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10pm: The night begins for Diana and Dodi Fayed with dinner within the sitting room of the Imperial Suite on the Ritz. It's the greatest suite within the lodge, and no marvel: The lodge is owned by Fayed's father, Mohamed Al Fayed.
The meals comes from the lodge's two-star restaurant, Espadon, which suggests swordfish. It is recognized for its 100,000-bottle wine cellar.
Diana is reported to have ordered an appetiser of mushrooms and asparagus, after which sole; for Dodi, turbot.
Dodi might have carried a shock in his pocket: Information experiences quote a Paris jeweller saying he'd offered him an "extraordinary" diamond solitaire ring for $300,000, and it's on the Ritz that Dodi might have given it to Diana.
Is it an engagement ring? Nobody will ever know for positive.
However the day has been tense. The couple has been having issues with paparazzi ever since their mid-afternoon arrival in Paris. First, they trailed Diana and Dodi from Le Bourget Airport outdoors Paris, on their technique to see Villa Windsor — a mansion that when housed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and that Dodi's father has purchased and renovated. Their driver managed to shake the photographers.
Then, an try to have a 9:30pm dinner on the stylish Paris bistro Chez Benoit failed, when paparazzi once more picked up the path. Giving up, Diana and Dodi resolve to dine on the Ritz, the place there may be higher safety.
Resort video reveals the vehicles arriving again on the Ritz, flashes going off as Diana goes by a revolving door, eyes downcast, trying distressed.
They stroll down the Ritz's blue carpet bordered in gold towards the restaurant. Ten minutes later, they stroll again down the hallway — "due to the eye within the restaurant," Paul Handley-Greaves, head of Al Fayed's safety crew, says later in London — and head up a spiral staircase to the Imperial Suite.
Inside, the plush lodge, with rust-coloured marble columns and flooring coated with Persian rugs, is calm and peaceable. However outdoors the doorway, on the elegant Place Vendome, paparazzi have once more gathered.
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10:08pm: Henri Paul, the No. 2 safety man on the Ritz, arrives on the lodge after having been summoned on his cellular phone at 10pm.
He parks his personal automobile outdoors, chats with some folks and shakes palms with a good friend, the night time responsibility supervisor and the concierge. Their accounts, Handley-Greaves says, "are that he was sober, he did not scent of alcohol, his gait was regular."
Paul spends the subsequent two hours within the foyer space. At one level, he goes into the lodge bar and sits with two different safety folks at a desk on the sting of the bar space.
There isn't a safety digital camera within the bar, however each Handley-Greaves and Michael Cole, an Al Fayed household spokesman, stated interviews with lodge personnel confirmed no proof that Paul was ingesting.
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12:07am: After dinner, as they go away the Imperial Suite, Diana and Fayed cease to debate the paparazzi "and the priority that the princess had that one thing would occur," Handley-Greaves says. "Earlier on within the day," he tells a London information convention, "she had expressed concern to bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones on the foolhardiness of the bike riders, not for the security of the car she was touring in.
She expressed concern that the erratic method through which they had been driving would possibly end in one in every of them falling beneath the wheels both of the lead automobile or the backup."
Diana and Fayed are headed to an condominium he owns off the Champs-Elysees, simply close to the Arc de Triomphe. Figuring out paparazzi are outdoors, they've determined to make use of two decoy autos — Vary Rover and a Mercedes. They put up the Vary Rover outdoors the Ritz's principal entrance, with Fayed's common driver on the wheel.
They want a 3rd automobile, so a rented Mercedes known as into service. The jet-black automobile, rented from the Etoile limousine firm, is thought for its silky-smooth trip, however due to its weight, it is not the perfect automobile for weaving out and in of visitors.
"This is not the sort of automobile you do slalom in," says Jean-Pierre Bretton, a limousine driver who usually picks up well-heeled purchasers on the Ritz.
Diana and Dodi want a driver, too, and that is why Paul has been referred to as again in from house. Paul, 41, a local of France's Brittany area, is reported to have obtained particular coaching in Germany to drive the armoured Mercedes.
Police say Paul lacked the particular license to drive the automobile; the Al Fayed household denies it.
Paris prosecutors say post-mortem blood assessments confirmed Paul was legally drunk, and judicial sources, talking on situation of anonymity, put the blood-alcohol degree at greater than thrice the authorized restrict, not less than.
Regardless of experiences that Paul was a heavy drinker, not less than two bartenders who knew him advised The Related Press they by no means noticed indicators of that.
Tony Poer, a former bartender at Willi's wine bar close to the Ritz, says Paul was a daily there, however solely drank beer.
"I by no means noticed him extraordinarily drunk," says Poer, now supervisor of a San Francisco nightclub.
"He even gave me a trip house just a few occasions. I wasn't anxious or something."
And Alain Bousseau, proprietor of the Mazarin bar not removed from the Ritz, says that though Paul was reported to be a daily there, he noticed him solely two or thrice in the previous couple of years.
As soon as, he drank solely a small glass of Cheverny wine; one other time, he had a espresso.
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12:19am: Dodi and Diana stand in an space by the again entrance of the lodge, milling with safety officers getting ready their departure.
A Ritz Resort safety digital camera video reveals Dodi slipping his arm protectively round Diana's waist.
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12:20am: The couple leaves the Ritz from the again entrance, and climbs into the Mercedes. Diana is wearing a black high, black jacket and belted white trousers. Her hair is rigorously coiffed and she or he wears purple lipstick.
Dodi appears to be like extra informal in a tan jacket and lengthy grey shirt, open on the neck and hanging loosely over stone-washed denims.
The lodge video reveals no paparazzi outdoors the again entrance, however the decoy ruse clearly hasn't labored.
With paparazzi in pursuit, the Mercedes travels down the Rue Cambon and turns proper onto the colonnaded, boutique-lined Rue de Rivoli, with the Tuileries Gardens on the left. Arriving on the Place de la Concorde, it takes a left previous the obelisk, permitting a view of the Champs-Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe on the fitting because it makes its technique to the financial institution of the Seine.
Right here, some photographers say, Paul already is driving dangerously. Jacques Langevin says he was advised by fellow photographers that on the Place de la Concorde, after they had been stopped at a purple gentle, the Mercedes took off with a roar earlier than the sunshine turned inexperienced.
Already, the photographer advised the Liberation every day, "the Mercedes was fishtailing dangerously and the driving force did not appear to be in management."
Neither Diana nor Fayed are carrying seat belts; solely bodyguard Rees-Jones, sitting within the entrance passenger seat, is carrying one.
The Mercedes is heading alongside the river now, down the Cours de la Reine, then the Cours Albert 1st, the place the strategy to the tunnel lies.
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About 12:25 am: The Mercedes enters the 200-metre-long tunnel, most likely to keep away from visitors on the crowded Place de l'Alma. The tunnel is brightly lit, neon bulbs reflecting on the white-tiled partitions.
The strategy is harmful at excessive pace. The highway swerves barely to the fitting, then to the left; then there's a fast dip.
The pace restrict is 30km/ph. A cab driver says he as soon as tried the tunnel at 110km/ph and was scared. "That factor is slim and harmful," stated Jacques Gaulthier. "You'd need to be loopy to take it quick."
Simply how briskly does Paul take it?
Police officers, talking on situation of anonymity, say the automobile's speedometer was discovered frozen at 196km/ph. They name it an virtually sure indicator of its pace at influence, however the Al Fayed household disputes that, saying the speedometer was caught as an alternative at zero. A Mercedes professional says the speedometer strikes robotically to 0 or to high pace when energy cuts off.
Witnesses even have described the automobile as going effectively over 145km/ph, maybe near 190km/ph.
Additionally, police say the automobile, geared up with anti-lock brakes, left 16 metres of skid marks — one other indication of excessive pace.
It is not clear what number of paparazzi are tailing the automobile, and at what distance. A lawyer for Al Fayed says a "cortege" of paparazzi had been "swarming" the automobile. However one photographer, Lazlo Veres, says they had been not less than 167 metres behind.
Seconds after the automobile enters the tunnel within the left westbound lane, it goes uncontrolled, putting the thirteenth concrete pillar dividing the tunnel, rolls over and rebounds into the fitting wall. It then spins round. When the automobile stops, it's dealing with east — the route it got here from.
The driving force's physique is slumped over the horn. The influence is so nice that elements of the radiator are reportedly discovered embedded in his physique. Fayed, behind him on the left facet of the automobile, is also killed instantly.
Jack and Robin Firestone, vacationers from Lengthy Island in New York, are strolling close to the tunnel after they hear the terrible noise. They run in. In interviews, they, too, describe photographers "swarming" the wreck.
But a physician who says he was driving by the tunnel within the different route simply after the accident, arriving earlier than rescuers did, says he wasn't hindered by the photographers.
Dr. Frederic Mailliez says Diana "was unconscious, moaning and gesturing in each route" as she fought for breath.
"There have been 10 or 15 photographers round, they usually had been snapping photographs nonstop, however I can not say they hindered my work," he says.
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12:27am: Firefighters get the primary name for assist.
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About 12:40am: Police and firefighters arrive. Diana and bodyguard Rees-Jones are nonetheless alive. The automobile is a crumpled mass of steel and glass.
Police arrest six photographers and one motorcyclist, confiscating their movie and mobile telephones.
Rescuers want to chop by the roof of the automobile to get the victims out. They lastly extract Diana by the again. In the meantime, emergency docs have been attempting to deal with her on the scene.
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2am: Diana is bleeding closely from the chest when she arrives at Hospital La Pitié Salpêtrière, together with the bodyguard. She shortly goes into cardiac arrest.
Docs shut a wound to the left pulmonary vein, then attempt to revive her with two hours of chest therapeutic massage — first externally after which on to the center. It fails.
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4am: Diana is said lifeless.
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6 am: "The demise of the Princess of Wales," says British ambassador Michael Jay, with docs at a hospital information convention, "fills us all with shock and deep grief."