Witness to Princess Diana crash speaks for the first time as he claims ‘I question if it was a genuine accident’
A WITNESS Princess Diana's fatal crash has broken his silence for the first time as he questions if it was "a genuine accident".
Retired lawyer Stanlee Culbreath believes emergency service delays and "other forces" were behind her tragic death.
He was one of the first witnesses to the scene of the crash and didn't speak out before now out of respect for Princes William and Harry.
He said it took an "insurmountable" amount of time for emergency services to reach the crash site.
Speaking to the , he said: "Why did it take 20 minutes or so to get to her and, when she was finally released [from the car], why did they pass one hospital and take her to another?"
Mr Culbreath, of Columbus, Ohio, had been in Paris on August 31, 1997 with two friends.
They took a late night sight-seeing tour of the city and their taxi heading back to their hotel via the Pont de L'Alma tunnel. They were among the first on the scene, entering the tunnel not long after the smash.
His taxi stopped and he recalls that the front passenger door was already open when he and his friends got out of the car.
He was unaware that the Princess Diana, 36, her lover Dodi Fayed, 42, driver Henri Paul, 41, and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, now 49 were in the vehicle.
The group stayed in the tunnel for around 15 minutes, and there was no sign of an ambulance when they left. Stanlee said he didn't even hear an ambulance siren when he was there.
There was one police office by the wreckage, who kept the men back from the vehicle.
He added: "After 15 or 20 minutes, there was still no paramedic on the scene. I was pleading with the officer to open the door... it looked like it could be pulled open. He wasn’t doing sh*t. He wasn’t doing anything."
During a 2008 inquiry it was determined that the crash was caused by drier Henri Paul travelling at 65mph. He was three times over the legal blood alcohol limit.
It also emerged that it took an hour and six minutes from the time Diana was taken from the wrecked car until she reached the hospital.
The inquest heard the princess may have lived had French medics not “squandered” crucial time treating her at the scene.
Mr Culbreath said he was sceptical about the delay in getting Diana out of the car wreckage. He claims the door on her side of the car could have been opened, and the 'jaws of life' used to cut the wreckage were unnecessary.
When he was on the scene, she was still alive and he heard her talking.
He added: “She was always there for people in their hour of need, for the common man – but when her hour came, it seemed the response was sadly lacking.”
His testimony comes just days after Brit bodyguard Alan McGregor, 68, said a mystery bellboy was allowed to drive her car minutes before her fatal crash 20 years ago.
He believes an alleged plot to kill her could have been six months in the making.
And he told how he once paid guerrillas £100million to stop them attacking Diana on her Red Cross trip to Angola.
Alan, who worked for the Saudi Secret Service, was tasked with protecting the nation’s royals at the Ritz in Paris in the months leading up to Diana’s death on August 31, 1997.
At the time the Princess would regularly visit with lover Dodi Fayed.
Alan revealed: “The night she died my wife woke up to tell me the news.
"My first response was ‘I’m not surprised’.
“I’d seen so many breaches in her security at that hotel and strange goings-on it was bound to happen sooner or later.
“The security that night was ludicrous.”
He said a bellboy in green uniform and matching cap drove her car to the hotel’s back entrance.
It was left there unattended until driver Henri Paul emerged a few minutes later.
Alan claims it was the biggest security breach he knew of in six years of working at The Ritz.
He said: “Why was it driven by a bellboy? It should have been a specially-trained driver or a security agent. He could have been anyone.
“You just don’t do that in security — especially when it’s somebody as high profile as Diana.
“Nobody used that entrance either because it wasn’t secure. Any member of the public could have walked up to it.
“It’s the responsibility of her team to make sure things like that didn’t happen but they just treated her like it was anyone. It was almost like Dodi Fayed wanted the paparazzi to see them together.
“They also got that car from the hotel’s public car park rather than the secure underground one.
“And Henri Paul had been appointed their driver but he wasn’t qualified either.
“There was no way he should have been put in that position.
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“He knew everyone at the hotel and would supply information of guestlists to security for money. But he wasn’t a security driver or a chauffeur and The Ritz had its own pool of personnel and limousines, plus licensed limousine chauffeurs.
“Diana herself used to always say she feared for her life and nobody ever really asked why.
“The question is whether it was planned?
“You could say all the elements that led to her death were just a tragic coincidence but part of me believes it could have been six months in the making. While I was working in Angola earlier that year we had lots of meetings to discuss ways Diana might be killed or injured.
“One of our biggest fears was a car crash and just eight months later, that’s exactly what happened.”
Following the inquest driver Paul, who crashed the car in the Alma Tunnel in Paris, and paparazzi photographers were blamed for Diana and Dodi’s unlawful killing.
Paul was said to have been three times over the drink-drive limit.
But CCTV footage showed no signs of drunken behaviour. Dad-of-four Alan said: “Paul wasn’t a drinker at all. I never saw him buying alcohol. He just wasn’t that sort of bloke. It doesn’t make any sense.
“I’d been through that tunnel so many times too and it would have been almost impossible to hit that pillar.
“I don’t think anybody will ever know what really happened. But, for me, a lot of things didn’t add up.”
Alan retired from the Saudi Secret Service five years ago and is hoping to release a book on his experience. Earlier this week Henri Paul’s father Jean, 85, said he fears he will die without knowing the truth.
He claims Diana and Dodi were killed in an Establishment plot to stop her marrying a Muslim.
He says his son was collateral damage. Jean, who lives in Lorient, France, also believes samples showing his son had alcohol in his system could have been tampered with after his death.
He said: “Diana was killed and my son was killed.
“I believe they were both murdered.”