The journalist who first reported on Lady Di's death recalled the terrible night: "Everything is blurry, a moment I will not forget ..."
Exactly 24 years ago, the world was shocked by the news that Princess Diana had died in a serious car accident, and the journalist who first reported her death now remembered that evening.
The mother of British Princes Harry and William and the wife of Prince Charles, the late Princess Diana, died in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997, and this year marks the 24th anniversary of her death.
Former British journalist and then-Paris correspondent Kevin Connolly recalled the terrible night when he first informed the British public that Diana was dead.
In an interview with the British The Express, he pointed out that the news of her death arrived very slowly and with a great deal of caution from the French police and authorities.
"We listened carefully to the French authorities and tried to decode their statements. The police were very careful about what they would place in public," Connolly said.
"The first thing they said was, 'Yes, this is the Princess of Wales and yes, she was injured,' but it could not be inferred that her injuries in the early morning hours were fatal," he recalled and said how he believes the French authorities were terrified of having to deal with such a great tragedy.
“They were aware of the reactions the news of her death would provoke and they knew it would resonate around the world,” Connolly believes.
He also told how he felt when he had to address the public with sad news.
“Everything is blurry to me from that night, until the moment the cameras came on and I had to be the one to tell the people in a special program that Princess Diana was dead,” he recalled.
“It’s a moment I’ll never forget and one that has stuck in my memory the most from my long hosting career,” Connolly pointed out.
Princess Diana was one of the most photographed women in the world and the media followed her every footstep, just like the evening when the Mercedes she was in with driver Henry Paul and her lover Dodi Fayed crashed into a concrete pillar inside a tunnel in Paris.
Fayed and Paul were pronounced dead on the spot while the princess fought for her life for some time but died at the hospital shortly after the ambulance brought her there. A fourth co-driver, bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, was seriously injured but survived a tragic accident.
In July this year, on the occasion of her 60th birthday, Diana’s sons William and Harry unveiled a statue dedicated to her in London located in Sunken Garden as part of Kensington Palace.
By: Olivia J. - Gossip Whispers
