Twenty-nine years after the Paris crash that killed Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul, Trevor Rees-Jones remains the only person who was inside their Mercedes and survived.
Rees-Jones left the Ritz Paris in the front passenger seat shortly after midnight on Aug. 31, 1997. The Mercedes crashed into a pillar in the Pont de l'Alma underpass. Paul and Fayed died at the scene, while Diana was taken to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where she died several hours later.
Rees-Jones was not Diana's personal bodyguard. The former British Army paratrooper worked for the Fayed family and had been ******* igned to protect Dodi, which also placed Diana within his security responsibilities while the couple traveled together, as PEOPLE reported on the crash's 29th anniversary.
He survived with severe head, chest and facial injuries. For the investigations that followed, however, one consequence proved especially significant, Rees-Jones could remember leaving the Ritz, but almost nothing reliable about what happened afterward.
French investigators questioned Rees-Jones within weeks of the crash, hoping the sole surviving occupant could explain the Mercedes' final journey. His head injury had left major gaps in his memory, and those early interviews produced little that investigators considered useful.
#rees #mercedes #dodi #crash
Rees-Jones left the Ritz Paris in the front passenger seat shortly after midnight on Aug. 31, 1997. The Mercedes crashed into a pillar in the Pont de l'Alma underpass. Paul and Fayed died at the scene, while Diana was taken to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where she died several hours later.
Rees-Jones was not Diana's personal bodyguard. The former British Army paratrooper worked for the Fayed family and had been ******* igned to protect Dodi, which also placed Diana within his security responsibilities while the couple traveled together, as PEOPLE reported on the crash's 29th anniversary.
He survived with severe head, chest and facial injuries. For the investigations that followed, however, one consequence proved especially significant, Rees-Jones could remember leaving the Ritz, but almost nothing reliable about what happened afterward.
French investigators questioned Rees-Jones within weeks of the crash, hoping the sole surviving occupant could explain the Mercedes' final journey. His head injury had left major gaps in his memory, and those early interviews produced little that investigators considered useful.
#rees #mercedes #dodi #crash
2 months ago
