Breaking his 20-year silence on the car accident, Colin Tebbutt, a retired royalty protection squad police officer, has revealed his regret that he wasn’t the one driving that night, saying, “I think they went in too fast… I’ve driven through the tunnel myself.”
Speaking to Good Morning Britain, Tebbutt also explained how he, together with Paul Burrell, took care of practicalities in Pitie-Salpetriere, the Paris hospital Princess Diana was taken to. The pair set up a “make-shift morgue”, the Daily Mail reports, sourcing fans to keep the hot room cool and boarding up the windows with blankets to keep out the prying eyes of the public and press.
“It’s very difficult and emotional to see a person lying in a bed and not in a mortuary,” Tebbutt told the program. “I went and got some fans to cool the room down. As I turned around, the eyelashes and hair of the Princess were moving, caused by the fan, and that just struck me.”
“I had to turn away, think about it and then grip myself back and get on with what I was doing.”
This article first published on Marie Claire.
