- Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were hounded by paparazzi after they left an event on Tuesday night.
- Their spokesperson said the entire ordeal lasted about two hours and was “near-disastrous”.
- “The public was in danger at several points,” a member of the royal family’s security guard said he told CNN.
Representatives for the royal couple said in a statement that Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland were “haunted” by paparazzi after they left an event in Manhattan on Tuesday night.
A spokesman for the Sussexes said a “very aggressive gang of paparazzi” followed the royals as they walked home from the awards ceremony and that the “near-disastrous chase” lasted “over two hours”.
“This relentless pursuit, which lasted for more than two hours, resulted in multiple close-by collisions involving other road drivers, pedestrians, and two NYPD officers,” a Sussexes spokesperson said in a statement. Shared by Royal Family correspondent Omid Scobie.
Here is a schedule of events.
At around 10pm on Tuesday, Harry and Meghan left the Ziegfeld Ballroom on West 54th Street.
On Tuesday night, Harry, Meghan and Ragland attended the Women in Vision Foundation’s Ms. Awards Gala in Manhattan, where Meghan delivered a speech. This was the royal couple’s first official joint appearance in five months.
The couple had entered the Ziegfeld Ballroom, where the event was taking place, via a nearby Hertz car rental location, in order to dodge paparazzi on the way, a witness said. he told the New York Post.
After the event, around 10 p.m., They are seen again Near Hertz on West 55th Street. They got into an SUV and started their journey, video from the Telegraph shows.
Before the reported chase began, a video showed Harry and Meghan being swarmed by the paparazzi. A paparazzi tried to get Meghan’s attention by asking her about being from “two broken families,” apparently referring to her strained relationship with her father, Thomas Markle, and Prince Harry’s feud with King Charles and Prince William.
For 75 minutes, Harry, Meghan, Ragland, and a security guard drove in an SUV up and down Manhattan Parkway while paparazzi followed
Law Enforcement Sources Anonymous he told NBC News Photographers tracked the couple for 75 minutes up and down Franklin D. Roosevelt’s East River Trail, which runs along Manhattan’s East Side.
Scooby reported that six cars with tinted windows followed the group, so they could not see who was following them.
Scobie tweeted that the drivers are obliging Multiple traffic violations During their pursuit of the Sussexes and Ragland’s vehicles, including “driving on the sidewalk, running red lights, reversing on a one-way street, driving while shooting and blocking an illegally moving vehicle”.
Police have not arrested anyone in connection with the incident, nor have they confirmed how long the ordeal lasted.
“The NYPD assisted the Special Security Team to protect the Duke and Duchess of Sussex,” Julian Phillips, an NYPD spokesperson, told Insider in a statement on Tuesday night.
The statement continued, “There were several photographers who made their transportation difficult. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there have been no reports of collisions, summonses, injuries or arrests.”
Chris Sanchez is a member of the security team protecting Harry and Meghan He told CNN, “I’ve never seen, been through anything like that. What we were dealing with was very chaotic. There were about a dozen vehicles: cars, motorcycles, bicycles.”
“The public was in danger at several points,” he continued. “It could have been fatal. They were jumping barriers and red lights. At one point they locked the limo and started taking pictures so we could get out.”
The party has arrived at the 19th New York Police Station Building
19 Precinct Station House is located on East 67th Street between Lexington and 3rd Street, 1.4 miles from the Ziegfeld Ballroom.
The group stayed at the 19th Precinct for 15 minutes before leaving in a yellow cab in New York City. The Daily Mail reported.
15 minutes after arriving at the precinct, Harry, Meghan, Ragland and Sanchez got into a taxi outside.
said Sukcharn Singh, the taxi driver Washington Post Harry, Meghan, an “elderly black woman,” and a security guard picked them up outside the area around 11pm. He said he got the impression from the group that they had already been followed by paparazzi before they got into his car.
Sanchez, a member of the security team, told CNN that Harry and Meghan switched cars during the car chase in an attempt to evade the paparazzi.
Singh said he led the group up the block and a half to Park Avenue before turning south. Singh said the post A few minutes into the flight, the security guard traveling with them was “concerned” about two vehicles following them: a black Honda Accord and an old gray Honda CR-V.
a TMZ video posted It showed the couple in a yellow taxi, stuck in traffic, as paparazzi recorded them through the windows.
“They kept following us and would come by the car,” Singh told the newspaper. “They took pictures when we stopped and they were filming us.”
The cab was also accompanied by NYPD cars with flashing lights and video displays.
After 10 minutes in the cab, the group returned to the 19th district, at the request of the security team
Singh was told by the security guard to return to the original pick-up point, fearing the paparazzi would know their final destination, the newspaper reported.
“I don’t think I would call it a hunt,” Singh told the Post about the trip. “I never felt like I was in danger. It wasn’t like a car chase in a movie. They were calm and it looked scared but it’s New York – it’s safe.”
Harry, Meghan, Ragland and Sanchez exited the area and got into another car without being followed
NBC News reported that they left the scene undisturbed and arrived at the apartment where they were staying.
Buckingham Palace told Insider that the incident is “not something we would comment on.”
Editor’s note: May 18, 2023 – The title of this story originally included an unattributed quote from a Sussex spokesperson. The headline now says Prince Harry and Meghan were in a car chase, not a “catastrophic close car chase”.
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