Fire chief recalls hearing Princess Diana’s final words at scene of fatal crash

 55 total views,  1 views today

A fire chief has recalled the moment he held Princess Diana’s hand and tried to calm her down in the immediate aftermath of her fatal car crash.

Sergeant Xavier Gourmelon says he noticed her ‘moving and talking’ in the wreckage after firefighters and medics were rushed to the Alma tunnel in Paris in the early hours of August 31, 1997.

Rescuers pulled the Princess of Wales’s boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed out and tried to resuscitate him, while Gourmelon stayed with her.

He told the Daily Mail: ‘She spoke in English and said, “Oh my God, what’s happened?” I could understand that, so I tried to calm her. I held her hand.’

Gourmelon said Diana’s breathing appeared normal, that her pulse was ‘fine and quite strong’ and that ‘apart from her shoulder’ he couldn’t see too much damage.

The Princess was fitted with a cervical collar, breathing mask and had a metallic isothermal blanket when the Gourmelon helped move her into an ambulance.

At first he didn’t recognise who she was, until a captain at the scene told him she was a member of the British Royal Family and one of the world’s most famous women.

Gourmelon also recalls seeing Diana’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones at the scene looking ‘very agitated’ and in need of medical help.

He was the only survivor of the crash, and is head injury was so serious he has little memory of what happened.

Dodi and driver Henri Paul were pronounced dead at the scene, while Diana was rushed to Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital.

Reports say she suffered from concussion, a broken arm a cut thigh and chest injuries.

MonSef Dahman was on duty at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital when Diana arrived in the emergency room.

He said: ‘I wasn’t told it was Lady Diana, but [only] that there’d been a serious accident involving a young woman.

‘For any doctor, any surgeon, it is of very great importance to be faced with such a young woman who is in this condition. But of course even more so if she is a princess.’

Doctors operated on her for two hours, but she never regained consciousness and died from internal bleeding.

Dahman added: ‘We fought hard, we tried a lot, really an awful lot. We could not save her. And that affected us very much.’

Paul, 41, was found to be three times over the French drink-driving limit when he crashed the Mercedes Benz S280 on the way to Dodi’s apartment from the Ritz hotel.