Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan were returning from a charity event in the city on the night of the 16th (local time), when six or seven cars from the paparazzi photo team relentlessly pursued them for speeding, driving them into a police station and then taking a taxi. The Associated Press reported that there was a grand adventure on the way home.
The car chase and media coverage bring back painful memories of Prince Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, being killed in a speeding car accident in downtown Paris in 1997 after being chased by paparazzi, but this time no one was hurt, police said.
Prince Harry and his wife’s dangerous experience became known because their spokesperson announced on the 17th that they had a dangerous pursuit by paparazzi on the streets of Manhattan that almost resulted in a fatal accident.
Upon hearing this, New York City Mayor Eric Adams immediately condemned the paparazzi, calling their speeding chase “reckless and irresponsible.”
Fortunately, the chase was relatively short, no one was hurt, and no hassles such as collisions, arrests, or additional investigations occurred, according to the New York Police Department.
However, due to the paparazzi relentlessly following the prince and his wife, the issue of personal protection has become a hot topic again, and the nightmare trauma of losing his mother, Diana, when Prince Harry was only 12 years old, is becoming a hot topic again.
Prince Harry and his wife attended a charity event at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan that night. I went there because of Meghan, who, along with Black Lives Matter co-founder Latosha Brown, won the “Women’s Vision Award.” However, as soon as they finished the event and boarded the SUV, paparazzi photographers and vehicles began to surround and follow them like bees, and eventually Prince Harry’s spokesperson asked the police for protection.
New York police vehicles escorted them to the police station and called a taxi to return them home.
The taxi driver, Sukhchan Singh, said that he immediately recognized the customers. However, he later said that paparazzi suddenly appeared from all sides and continued to take pictures.
The vehicle in which Prince Harry and his wife were riding was confirmed to have nearly crashed and injured several times on the night of the 16th while fleeing paparazzi vehicles, but it was confirmed that police protected driving on the streets spanning the 18th precinct and led them to the police station, the Associated Press reported. Reportedly, quoting a police officer.
The officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to make the case public, confirmed that Prince Harry and Meghan spent a few minutes at the police station waiting for the situation to calm down before returning by taxi.
Prince Harry’s office released a statement, saying, “No matter how high public interest in any celebrity is, no one’s safety or life should be sacrificed because of it.”
Meanwhile, Bruce Katler, president of the New York Photojournalists Association, said that the behavior of the paparazzi photographers on the night of the 16th violated the basic principles of photojournalism in news reporting, and that they could protect their jobs and themselves according to the photojournalistic principle of “recording and observing”. He said that he hopes to keep respect for him.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.