LONDON: Competing claims surfaced on Thursday over Prince Harry and his wife Meghan’s purported involvement in a “near catastrophic car chase” with paparazzi in New York.

A spokesperson for the couple drew global attention by announcing on Wednesday that they had endured a “relentless” two-hour pursuit that resulted in “multiple near collisions involving other drivers”.

The account of Tuesday’s incident prompted comparisons to the circumstances around the Paris car crash in 1997 that killed Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, which the prince blames on paparazzi pursuing her.

However, while the New York Police Department (NYPD) confirmed the incident, its response made it sound less serious. Newspa­pers reported that one celebrity news agency involved had accused their security detail of themselves behaving in a manner “that could be perceived as reckless”.

Taxi driver Sukhcharn Singh, who briefly had the couple and Meghan’s mother in his cab as they tried to outwit the photographers, said they looked scared but did not think there would be an accident.

In an interview aired on Thursday on Britain’s ITV, one of the photographers involved in the drama alleged the couple’s vehicle entourage were to blame for any danger. “It was very tense trying to keep up with the vehicles,” said the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous.

“They did a lot of blocking and there was a lot of different type of manoeuvres to stop what was happening.”

A New York police spokesperson said photographers made the group’s transport “challenging”, but there were “no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests”.

The New York Post quoted a source as saying that there were no emergency calls to police about the incident and that the purported chase “definitely wasn’t two hours”.

But Chris Sanchez, a member of the couple’s security team, told CNN that the pursuit was alarming and dangerous.

That has provoked accusations from the couple’s critics, especially on social media, that they had milked the incident for their own ends.

“The first statement was laced with the sort of hyperbole we have come to expect from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when alleging media intrusion into their lives,” columnist Camilla Tominey wrote in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Right-wing former politician and broadcaster Nigel Farage was withering on Twitter: “NYPD do not know about ‘near catastrophic’ crash. Harry and Meghan are frauds.”

The royal family, as is customary, have stayed silent on the incident, but outside Buckingham Palace as across Britain, the public view was mixed.

“I can’t believe a two-hour car chase in New York. So I would doubt the veracity of Prince Harry’s statement,” said retired lawyer Nick Williams.

Others were sympathetic. “I’ve always loved them, so I feel for them,” said legal administrator Paris Smith.

Many spoke of the similarity with the death of Diana, who for years had dealt with paparazzi following her wherever she went and from whom her chauffeur-driven car was trying to escape when it crashed.

“It’s a game to a certain extent you’re never going to win,” former royal protection officer Simon Morgan told Sky News. “We know how catastrophic that cat-and-mouse game can actually be when we look back to 1997 and the death of the Duke’s mother”, he added.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2023