“To be honest, I thought she would live,” Gourmelon told The Sun in 2017. “But I found out later she had died in hospital. It was very upsetting. The memory of that night will stay with me forever.”
At the time, Gourmelon said he did not even realise the injured woman was Princess Diana until paramedics informed him.
A Rare, Fatal Injury
In his 2019 memoir Unnatural Causes, Dr Richard Shepherd, one of Britain’s leading forensic pathologists, explained that Diana’s death was caused by a “tiny, badly placed tear” in a vein of her lung—a rare injury he had never seen before in his career.
He added that had Diana been wearing her seatbelt, she likely would have survived the crash, perhaps only sustaining minor injuries such as a black eye, broken ribs, and a fractured arm. “She would probably have appeared in public two days later,” Shepherd wrote.
A Nation in Mourning
Diana’s sudden death sent shockwaves across the globe. Her body was returned to the UK, and on September 6, 1997, millions of mourners lined the streets for her funeral procession, which travelled from St James’s Palace to Westminster Abbey.
She was laid to rest on a secluded island within the grounds of Althorp, her family’s ancestral estate in Northamptonshire.
More than 25 years on, the haunting words she spoke in those final moments still echo, a poignant reminder of a life cut short and a princess whose legacy endures.
