A former bodyguard of Prince Harry has said the Sussexes’ security should have been “properly stage-managed” as accounts of the “near catastrophic” New York car chase on Tuesday evening cast doubts on the couple’s public statement.
“The protection team he has got at the moment has never dealt with such a high-profile celebrity as Harry and Meghan,” Ken Wharfe told ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Thursday, adding he had some sympathy for the couple.
“The whole point is you have to take advice on this, and I don’t know to what extent the New York police department were involved, but basically it’s something that needs to be properly stage-managed,” he said.
Wharfe’s remarks came after accounts from a paparazzi driver, a taxi driver and the New York police cast doubt on details of the incident, initially described by the duke’s spokesperson as a “relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours”.
Wharfe described paparazzi photographers as capable of being “talked to” at best, and at worst a nuisance. “But they’re not out to cause the death of any one person. So, I think we have to be a little bit careful there,” he said.
The incident, which took place after the couple attended an awards ceremony on Tuesday, highlighted the many struggles facing the celebrity couple: intense UK tabloid interest, a legal battle over personal security, and the question of media intrusion as the couple courts attention with TV interviews and award appearances while also demanding privacy.
Harry, the Duchess of Sussex and her mother are said to have been subjected to a “relentless pursuit” involving half a dozen blacked-out vehicles, according to their spokesperson, who described the car chase as near catastrophic “at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi”.
There were no reported collisions, injuries or arrests, according to police.
The episode, which recalls the death of Harry’s mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed when her car crashed as it was followed by paparazzi in Paris in 1997, has since been the subject of conflicting accounts from New York police, a taxi driver, a member of the couple’s security team and a paparazzi driver.
A member of the security team, Chris Sanchez, said the chase was “chaotic” and could have ended in fatalities. A taxi driver who briefly drove the couple said although they were followed the entire drive, he would not call it a chase. And the New York mayor, Eric Adams, condemned the “reckless” pursuit but cast doubt over the “two-hour high speed chase”.
Speaking anonymously with ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Thursday, a paparazzi driver described it as “very tense” trying to keep up with the couple’s vehicle and claimed their driver made it a “catastrophic experience”.
“For the most part, I was driving and it was very tense trying to keep up with the vehicles. They did a lot of blocking and there was a lot of different type of manoeuvres to stop what was happening,” the driver said.
“Their driver was making it a catastrophic experience ... if they were going 80mph, I would probably have been going 20mph behind them and hoping to keep sight of them.
“If it was dangerous and catastrophic, it was more than likely based on the person that was driving.”
