New York taxi driver Sukhcharn Singh, who drove Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and Markle’s mom Doria Ragland round Manhattan on Tuesday evening, by no means felt unsafe. Nevertheless, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “appeared very nervous”. Markle and Harry’s workplace stated the pair had been concerned in a ‘almost disastrous automotive chase’ attributable to ‘very aggressive’ paparazzi following them after Markle accepted an award from the Ms. Basis for Ladies on the Ziegfeld Ballroom.
After Harry and Markle left the awards present round 10 p.m., they drove round Midtown for greater than an hour with their non-public and NYPD safety guards, regulation enforcement sources stated. CBS Information. They feared the paparazzi would discover out the place they had been staying. At one level, their black SUV pulled up so Harry, Markle and Ragland might get into Singh’s cab.
“Meghan was scared, Harry was nervous,” Singh stated CBS Information. “The paparazzi got here out of nowhere, taking footage, standing in entrance of the taxi and all that.” The driving force stated the couple requested him to drop them off at a police station after about 10 to fifteen minutes in his taxi. They received into one other automotive to lastly return to their lodge.
In one other interview with The Washington Submit, Singh stated a black Honda Accord and a grey Honda CR-V adopted them as Harry and Meghan traveled in his taxi. “They stored following us and had been coming subsequent to the automotive,” Singh stated. “They took pictures as we stopped and filmed us.”
Singh did not assume he was being chased when the royal couple had been of their taxi. “I by no means felt like I used to be at risk. It wasn’t like a automotive chase in a film,” Singh stated. “They had been quiet and appeared scared however that is New York – that is for positive.”
Harry and Meghan described the incident as an “virtually catastrophic automotive chase”, including that the “relentless pursuit” of photographers lasted two hours. There have been “a number of close to misses” through the incident, they claimed.
“Whereas being a public determine engenders some public curiosity, it ought to by no means come on the expense of anybody’s security,” they stated in an announcement. “The discharge of those photos, given the style by which they had been obtained, encourages a extremely intrusive and harmful apply for all concerned.”
In its assertion, the New York Police Division stated there have been “quite a few photographers” who made it “troublesome to move” Harry and Markle. Police stated there have been “no reported collisions, summonses, accidents or arrests” in relation to the incident.
Harry’s mom, Princess Diana, died in a automotive crash in Paris in 1997 as paparazzi chased her car. Harry has talked about prior to now that he was involved about one thing like this occurring to his family. “My greatest concern was historical past repeating itself,” he advised Oprah Winfrey in 2021. “And once I’m speaking about historical past repeating itself, I am speaking about my, my mom.”