(6 of 7)
Yet given Paul's sudden spectacular loss of control, the question arises whether some defect in the steering or braking system may have been at fault. The initial postaccident inspection by police experts showed the car to have been in good mechanical condition. But the final verdict on that question may have to wait until investigators have completely dismantled and inspected the car part by part. In the past few days, experts reportedly sent Judge Stephan a series of "observations" about the car's braking system.
DIANA'S INJURIES. Horrific internal injuries may have doomed the princess from the moment of impact. But the amount of time that elapsed between the accident and her arrival at the hospital--more than 1 1/2 hours--could have been a factor in sealing her fate. With her left pulmonary vein ripped, her heart was pumping blood by the quart into her chest cavity. That fact was not apparent to the first witnesses and medical workers on the scene. What they found was an elegantly coiffed woman sitting on the floor of the car with her legs up on the rear seat, leaning against the back of the front passenger seat. She was bleeding from a gash on her forehead. Blood was also flowing from her ear, nose and mouth. But she was conscious and moving.
Among the first bystanders to arrive, an off-duty chauffeur told her softly in English, "Don't move. Help is coming," as she tried to sit up and get out of the car. Another early arrival, a Portuguese cleaning woman, told TIME that "Diana's head and bust were leaning on the window. She was moaning very loudly, saying, 'Aye! Aye! Aye!' Her cries reverberated through the tunnel." The princess tried to speak and was once heard to murmur, "My God." But no direct witness reports her saying anything coherent. The first two policemen on the scene found her semiconscious. One of them tried to keep her awake by "talking to her and tapping on her cheek."
Once the emergency units arrived, it took them 30 to 45 minutes to extract Diana from the vehicle and stabilize her with intubation, oxygen and treatment for shock. At 1:18 a.m. she was placed in an ambulance. At the doctor's insistence, the ambulance proceeded slowly so as not to aggravate the injuries. Thus it took some 40 minutes to reach the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital instead of the usual 10 minutes. On arrival at 2:05 a.m., the princess was in cardiac arrest. Doctors opened her chest and found massive internal bleeding from the ruptured vein. Although they sutured the wound and administered heart massage, no cardiac activity could be re-established. She was pronounced dead at 4:15 a.m.
The medical examiner's report attributed her death to "internal hemorrhaging due to a crushed thorax and to a phenomenon of deceleration which caused a rupture of the left pulmonary vein." Her other wounds included cuts on the forehead and over the lip, a fractured right arm, cuts on the right thigh and the back of the left thigh, plus bruises on the hands and feet.