French firefighter reveals Princess Diana's last words
- Publish Date
- Monday, 3 September 2018, 8:40AM
Photo / Instagram
Last week marked 21 years since Princess Diana passed away at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris after the car that she was in smashed into a pillar inside a tunnel just a year after her split from Prince Charles.
Firefighter Xavier Gourmelon was one of the first to get to the crash site, and has finally revealed what the late Princesses last words were, 20 years on.
Since the crash, the firefighter has revealed that he had no idea who he was treating that night, and it was only after she had passed away that he realised.
But what were Princess Diana's last words?
Just last year Xavier opened up to The Sun for the first time about the events of the fateful night as French firefighters are not permitted to speak to any media at all.
It was only in the inquest back in 2007 that he revealed what happened.
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Xavier Gourmelon revealed to the publication that when he got to the scene of the crash, he had spoken to Princess Diana, who had then responded with: "My God, what's happened?"
Gourmelon added: "The car was in a mess and we just dealt with it like any road accident. For me this was simply a banal traffic accident, one of many that emergency services have to deal with and it was the usual causes, speed and a drunk driver.
"We were very close and it took less than three minutes to reach it. My 10-man team was in two trucks and we were the first to arrive," Gourmelon said. The firefighter also revealed that while "nothing that could be done" for Henri Paul and Trevor Rees-Jones had 'severe' injuries, the Princess did not seem affected.
He said: "Mr Fayed was in the back and in a bad condition, he had a cardiac arrest in the car and when he was taken out he was declared dead by a paramedic.
The woman, who I later found out was Princess Diana, was on the floor in the back.
"She was moving very slightly and I could see she was alive. I could see she had a slight injury to her right shoulder but, other than that, there was nothing significant.
There was no blood on her at all." Gourmelon then tried to reassure Diana and "told her to be calm and keep still".
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It was then that Princess Diana spoke to him and asked what had happened. "I gave her some oxygen and my team and I stayed by her side as she was taken out of the car. It was very quick because we didn't have to cut any of the wreckage," the firefighter said.
Gourmelon revealed that he believed that she would survive, but once Diana was on a stretcher she suffered cardiac arest and needed CPR.
She started breathing again afterward but later passed away.
"To be honest I thought she would live. As far as I knew when she was in the ambulance she was alive and I expected her to live. But I found out later she had died in hospital. It was very upsetting. I know now that there were serious internal injuries, but the whole episode is still very much in my mind."
This article was first published on dailymail.co.uk and is reproduced here with permission.
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