"Did I do everything I could to save her?" Princess Di's first responder opens up
The first medic on the scene of Princess Diana's fatal car crash said he will always feel responsible for the final moments before she died.
Frederic Mailliez, a French doctor, desperately tried to save the Princess of Wales after he found the royal unconscious and struggling to breathe on the floor of the mangled Mercedes in the Alma Tunnel on August 31th, 1997.
Now, as the 25th anniversary of her death approaches, the medic says he is still scarred by what happened that night and the realisation that he was one of the last people to see the princess alive.
"I realise my name will always be attached to this tragic night," Mailliez, who was on his way home from a party when he came across the car crash, told The Associated Press. "I feel a little bit responsible for her last moments."
Mailliez was driving into the tunnel when he spotted a smoking Mercedes nearly split in two but did not recognise the Princess, despite acknowledging she was a "very beautiful woman".
"I walked toward the wreckage. I opened the door, and I looked inside," he said.
Describing the scene, he said, "Four people, two of them were apparently dead, no reaction, no breathing, and the two others, on the right side, were living but in severe condition."
"The front passenger was screaming, he was breathing. He could wait a few minutes. And the female passenger, the young lady, was on her knees on the floor of the Mercedes, she had her head down. She had difficulty to breathe. She needed quick assistance."
The doctor ran back to his car to call for emergency services and grab a respiratory bag to help.
"She was unconscious," he said. "Thanks to my respiratory bag (...) she regained a little bit more energy, but she couldn't say anything."
It was not until later that the doctor realised his patient was the Princess.
"I know it's surprising, but I didn't recognise Princess Diana," he said. "I was in the car on the rear seat giving assistance. I realised she was very beautiful, but my attention was so focused on what I had to do to save her life, I didn't have time to think, who was this woman."
"It was a massive shock to learn that she was Princess Diana, and that she died," Mailliez said.
When he was informed who the injured woman was, the doctor was flooded with self-doubt.
"Did I do everything I could to save her? Did I do correctly my job?" he asked himself.
"I checked with my medical professors and I checked with police investigators," he said, and they agreed he did all he could.
The anniversary is stirring up those memories again, but they also come back "each time I drive through the Alma Tunnel," he said.
Image credits: Getty Images