Prince Harry, his wife Meghan and her mother were involved in a “near catastrophic car chase” involving paparazzi photographers, a spokesperson for the prince said on Wednesday.
The incident happened after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had attended an awards ceremony by the Ms. Foundation for Women, where Meghan was honoured for her work, on Tuesday evening.
“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,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“This relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD (New York Police Department) officers.”
Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, was killed in a high-speed chase in 1997 after trying to flee the paparazzi who had been following her while she drove through Paris.
The Duke of Sussex wrote extensively about his mother’s death in his bestselling memoir Spare and about his anger at press intrusion into the lives of the Royal Family.
Prior to attending the 2007 Rugby World Cup semi final in Paris when he was 23 years old, he asked the driver of his car to go through the tunnel where his mother was tragically killed.
“The World Cup provided me with a driver, and on my first night in the City of Light I asked him if he knew the tunnel where my mother…” he wrote. “I watched his eyes in the rearview, growing large. The tunnel is called Pont de l’Alma, I told him. Yes, yes. He knew it.”
Harry and Meghan stepped down from their royal roles in 2020 and moved to the United States partly because of what they described as intense media harassment.
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