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PRINCESS DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES COMMEMORATIVE COIN
1961 - 1997
The entrance to the Pont d'Alma tunnel, the site of Diana's fatal car accident.
On 31 August 1997, Diana died after a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris along with Dodi Al-Fayed and the acting security manager of the Hôtel Ritz Paris, Henri Paul, who was instructed to drive the hired Mercedes-Benz through Paris in order to elude the paparazzi.[27] Their black 1994 Mercedes-Benz S280 crashed into the thirteenth pillar of the tunnel. The two-lane tunnel was built without metal barriers in front of the pillars. None of the four occupants wore seat belts.
The paparazzi, who had been trailing the car, arrived at the Alma underpass at different stages. Serge Arnal, Christian Martinez and Stéphane Darmon appear to have arrived first, quickly followed by Serge Benhamou. Records supplied by mobile telephone operators Itinéris and SFR support Serge Arnal's claim that he attempted to call the emergency services. Film seized from the cameras of Christian Martinez and Serge Arnal showed that they were taking photographs of the car and/or the occupants almost immediately after arrival at the scene – there were no emergency services near the car visible in their photographs.
Blood analysis showed that Henri Paul was illegally intoxicated with alcohol while driving. He drove at high speed in order to evade the pursuing paparazzi. Tests showed he had consumed amounts of alcohol three times that of the French legal limit. Fayed's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, who was in the passenger seat, was closest to the point of impact and yet he was the only survivor of the crash. Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly, and Diana—unbelted in the back seat- slid forward during the impact and, having been violently thrown around the interior, "submarined" under the seat in front of her, suffering serious damage to her heart with subsequent internal bleeding.She was eventually, after considerable time, transported by ambulance to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, but on the way she went into cardiac arrest twice. Despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage, she died at 4 a.m. local time.Her funeral on 6 September 1997 was broadcast and watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide.
