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Hailed by passersby while patrolling in the area, the first two police officers reached the scene within five minutes of the accident. In their official report, the officers described the scene thus: "Numerous people, mainly photographers, were shooting pictures of the right rear of the car, whose door was open." One of the officers "rushed up and attempted to push back the photographers, who offered resistance. They were virulent, pushy and continued to take photos, intentionally preventing him from bringing aid to the victims. One of them pushed [the officer] back and declared, 'You piss me off. Let me do my work. At Sarajevo at least the cops let us work.'"
Police and eyewitness reports and even the accounts of some of the photographers agree on this point: the paparazzi were in a state of excitement bordering on frenzy. Two of them in particular got into a heated argument, with one photographer reportedly shouting at another, "It's your fault!" One of them, described by witnesses as among the most "aggressive," grabbed the arm of one of the police officers, who was trying to move him back from the scene.
As unsavory as their picture-taking binge may have been, the primary legal question is whether the photographers conspicuously failed to aid "persons in danger," as required by French law. One big strike against them is that with one exception, none of them attempted to call for help, though all were equipped with cell phones. Their almost unanimous response to this charge is that they heard or assumed "someone else" had already called.
According to police records, the first call to the fire department's emergency medical unit was made at 12:26 by an anonymous woman using a borrowed cell phone. The police had not yet arrived. The first medical worker to arrive was Christian Mailliez, 36, an off-duty emergency-service doctor who happened to be driving through the opposite lane of the tunnel on the way back from a birthday party. "There was a lot of smoke," he told TIME and CNN in a joint interview. "People were speaking loudly. There was a kind of panic, like one usually finds at accident scenes." Dressed in a white T shirt and white jeans that were soon spattered with the princess' blood, Mailliez put an oxygen mask over her face while a former volunteer fireman supported Rees-Jones' bloody head in his hands. Mailliez said the paparazzi had not hindered him in his work. He left once the first emergency firefighters' unit arrived at 12:32 a.m., about seven minutes after the accident.
Lawyers for the photographers say they expect both the manslaughter and nonassistance charges against their clients to be dropped before the case goes to trial. Judge Stephan is unlikely to take any such step until the investigation is further along. It is possible that the photographers will be found to have different degrees of culpability. Already the judge has singled out two photographers, Rat and Martinez, for harsh treatment. Both men had to pay bail and had their press cards suspended.