On Tuesday evening, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and her mom Doria Ragland attended the Ms Foundation’s Women of Vision Awards in New York City to honor the Duchess of Sussex, who was an honoree at the ceremony. In new reports, the family was chased by a “swarm” of paparazzi after the event, which lead to “near catastrophic” consequences.
“Last night, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Ms. Ragland were involved in a near catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi,” a spokesperson for the couple told People. “This relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD officers.”
According to CNN, a local law enforcement source for the outlet said they were followed by a “swarm” of paparazzi which did not result in a crash.
The spokesperson added, “While being a public figure comes with a level of interest from the public, it should never come at the cost of anyone’s safety. Dissemination of these images, given the ways in which they were obtained, encourages a highly intrusive practice that is dangerous to all in involved.”
After the event, held at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan, the trio were on their way to a friend’s private residence, People reported.
Princess Diana, Harry’s mother, died in a car crash in Paris while photographers were swarming her vehicle. The crash took place in 1997 when Harry was 12 years old.
During the promotion of his memoir, Spare, Harry told Anderson Cooper on CBS’s 60 Minutes that he refused to accept that his mother was gone and said he believed she “disappeared for a time, and then that she would call us and that we would go and join her, yeah.”
Cooper read a part of the book where Harry wrote: “I’d often say it to myself first thing in the morning, ‘Maybe this is the day. Maybe this is the day that she’s gonna reappear.’”
Harry replied, “I had huge amounts of hope.”
At 20 years old, Harry said he asked to see the police report from his mother’s car crash and looked at photos of the scene because he wanted “proof that she was in the car. Proof that she was injured. And proof that the very paparazzi that chased her into the tunnel were the ones that were taking photographs of her lying half dead on the back seat of the car.”
He also drove through the same tunnel in Paris where his mother died while going the same speed Princess Diana was traveling.
In the couple’s Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, the royal opened up about his mother. “I don’t have many early memories of my mom,” he said in a one-on-one interview. “It was almost like, internally, I sort of blocked them out.”
He added, “The majority of my memories are of being swarmed by paparazzi. Rarely did we have a holiday without someone with a camera jumping out of a bush or something.”
Harry and Meghan stepped back from their royal roles in 2020 when they moved to California, away from the media glare, which they addressed in their documentary. They share two children, Archie, 4, and Lilibet, 1. Archie just celebrated his birthday on May 6, the same day as his grandfather King Charles’ coronation. Harry attended to support his father, while Meghan stayed home.
