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Report: Driver's alcohol level even higher than reported
September 2, 1997
Web posted at: 11:35 p.m. EDT (0335 GMT)Latest developments:
- Did driver taunt paparazzi?
- Prosecutors: Speedometer on zero, not 196 kph
- Contradictory portrait emerging of driver
- Experts: Seat belts may have saved Diana, Fayed
- Related stories and sites
PARIS (CNN) -- More disturbing news emerged Tuesday about the driver of the car in which Princess Diana was killed: His blood alcohol level at the time of the wreck may have been even higher than originally believed.
Who's to blame?
CNN's Brent Sadler reports
2 min., 30 sec. VXtreme streaming video
Also, press reports suggested that the driver, Henri Paul, had taunted photographers who chased the Mercedes S280 before it crashed Sunday in a Paris tunnel near the Seine River.
The French newspaper Le Monde said Tuesday that Paul, who was killed in the crash along with Diana's boyfriend Dodi Fayed, may have been more intoxicated than judicial sources said Monday.
The newspaper said a second police toxicology analysis registered a level of 1.87 grams of alcohol-per-liter of blood -- higher than the initial 1.75 figure.
If confirmed, that would give the driver a blood-alcohol level nearly four times than 0.5 grams-per-liter legal limit in France.
Even the lower figure of 1.75 grams -- the equivalent of quickly drinking nine shots of whiskey -- would mean that Paul had a blood alcohol content of at least 0.175 percent.
Most U.S. states consider a driver to be legally drunk when a blood alcohol content of 0.10 percent is reached.
Did driver taunt paparazzi?
The Times of London on Tuesday cited unconfirmed reports that the driver had taunted the paparazzi by saying, "Catch me if you can," before speeding away from the hotel with Diana, Fayed and a bodyguard.
Several newspapers similarly quoted an unnamed photographer as hearing Paul boasting to waiting paparazzi: "You won't catch me."
However, a spokesman for Fayed's father and Paul's employer, Mohammed Al Fayed, said the driver did not appear drunk to hotel employees and did not taunt photographers as the couple left the Paris Ritz hotel, which the elder Al Fayed owns.
Spokesman Michael Cole said that after the crash, Al Fayed dispatched his security director -- a former Scotland Yard detective chief superintendent -- to Paris.
Cole said Paul did not appear drunk to hotel employees, that he did not taunt photographers, and that the speedometer on the doomed Mercedes S280 was not stuck on a high rate of speed following the fatal crash.
Cole said Al Fayed's investigators found "the allegation that Paul taunted the press as he drove away from the front of the hotel is untrue. He left from the rear exit and at a time when, according to film evidence, no paparazzi were in the immediate vicinity."
Prosecutors: Speedometer on zero, not 196 kph
Prosecutors on Tuesday also said the speedometer in the Mercedes was stuck on zero, not 196 kph (121 mph) as a police source had previously said.
Paul had driven Diana and Dodi Fayed into Paris earlier in the day after arriving in the city by plane, according to a statement by London's Harrods luxury store, which the elder Al Fayed also owns.
Paul was on duty at the hotel until about 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Cole said. He left the hotel after it appeared that Diana and Dodi Fayed had left the hotel for the evening.
Paul returned to the hotel at about 10:10 p.m. after he was told the couple had unexpectedly decided to return to dine at the hotel, Cole said.
"He was observed driving his own car to the hotel, parking it in the normal way and walking normally into the hotel," the Al Fayed spokesman said.
"In the hotel he spoke to a number of members of staff, none of whom detected any smell of drink or any other signs to suggest he had been drinking," the Al Fayed spokesman said.
Contradictory portrait emerging of driver
But colleagues interviewed in the French press painted contradictory pictures of the No. 2 security man at the Ritz; some describing him as a teetotaler and others as a drunk.
Some friends and colleagues expressed surprise that the 41-year-old former air force officer was involved in the crash.
"He was a very friendly guy, very serious," one longtime friend, Air France pilot Jean-Louis Le Baraillec, told the Ouest France daily.
"One cannot say he was a drunk," a Ritz colleague told the daily Le Parisien.
In the daily Liberation, one Ritz employee, speaking anonymously, said Paul had given up drinking last year and had been seen drinking only orange juice at a reception at the hotel last week.
But another said he came to work one day last week completely intoxicated.
The statement by Harrods praised Paul as a "conscientious and responsible member of staff" and stressed that he had twice attended special driving classes for limousine chauffeurs at a Mercedes-Benz training track in Germany.
The popular daily France-Soir quoted an anonymous Ritz official as describing Paul as "calm and very competent."
"He mastered the technique of high-speed driving," he said. Sunday morning, "he must have been surprised by the car's power and could not control the speed."
Lawyer to seek another blood test
A lawyer for Paul's family, Jean-Pierre Brizay, said he will insist on another blood test to try to disprove allegations of drunkenness.
Brizay insisted Paul was "a professional of the highest level" who worked for the Ritz for 13 years.
"You can't bring him back to life, but you can defend his memory," Brizay said.
Asked about the level of alcohol investigators say they found in Paul's bloodstream, he said: "I reserve my judgment. I want to see how it was checked."
The driver's body now lies in a French morgue, and he will be buried in his native Brittany this weekend.
Civil suits brought, another possible
Both Paul's family and Al Fayed have brought civil suits in the case against photographers being investigated by police and a French magistrate, according to Brizay and a lawyer for Al Fayed.
On Tuesday, Al Fayed lawyer George Kiejman said the billionaire businessman was joining the case against the photographers to prove that there was a cause and effect "between the pursuit (by paparazzi) and the accident."
A French judge on Tuesday named six photographers and a motorcyclist as manslaughter suspects in the fatal crash.
Meanwhile, Al Fayed's business empire could face a lawsuit by Princess Diana's grieving relatives.
A French legal expert, Henri Adler, said that under French law, Diana's family may be able to claim damages from the Ritz.
"If (the driver) committed a crime, which seems to be the case ... the victims may sue his employer in front of a civil court to ask for reparation, damages, etc.," said Adler, the former president of the Paris bar association.
Whether a degree of criminal responsibility is eventually proved or not, a deadly mixture of circumstances seems to have led to Princess Diana's death -- car speed, alcohol and photographers in hot pursuit.
'Everybody blaming everybody else'
"One of the difficulties of the moment is now everybody is blaming everybody else," said Anne Applebaum of the Sunday Telegraph in London.
"The tabloid press is now blaming the Al Fayed family for allowing drunken security guard to drive the car that had the Princess of Wales in it," Applebaum said.
"Quite a lot of people are still blaming the tabloid press for buying photographs from photographers that will chase a car. Other people are blaming the public for buying those tabloid newspapers."
In some quarters in England, public opinion blames the Al Fayed organization.
"It's an appalling lack of security on the part of the people that were supposed to be in charge of the security, and it's a tragic shame," said one Londoner. "What a way to end a life."
Experts: Seat belts may have saved Diana, Fayed
Meanwhile, British automotive safety experts said Diana and Fayed might have survived the crash had they been wearing seat belts.
French police refuse to say whether they were wearing seat belts, but media reports say they were not. The lone survivor was bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who was sitting in the front passenger seat and was wearing a seat belt and had the benefit of an air bag.
Rees-Jones is conscious and out of danger, but his face was badly damaged in the crash and it will be weeks before he can speak to investigators, a lawyer for the Al Fayed family said.
"We know that the impact speed with the post was survivable because the bodyguard survived," said British road safety expert Richard Cuerden, the head of the University of Birmingham's Accident Research Center.
"We expect that people in the rear have as good a chance, if not better, of making it," he told Reuters. "It is hypothetical, but if Princess Diana were wearing a belt, she may not have sustained life-threatening injuries."
Paris Bureau Chief Jim Bittermann, Correspondents Brent Sadler and Walter Rodgers, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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