Diana Inquest: Witness Says Chauffeur Henri Paul Was Terrible Driver

The man chauffeuring the Princess of Wales and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, the night they died in a Paris car crash was a reckless driver, a witness testified Tuesday at the British inquest into their deaths.

Myriah Daniels, a holistic healer and masseuse who was on the staff of Fayed’s yacht Jonikal, said she rode in a Range Rover driven by Henri Paul when the couple returned to Paris in late August 1997.

“I should be dead. I was positive I would be killed in that drive,” Daniels testified.

British and French police hold Paul responsible for the fatal crash on Aug. 31, 1997, in which he died, along with Diana and Fayed. They found evidence that his blood-alcohol level was over the legal limit and that he was speeding.

Daniels rode with Paul in a convoy while Diana and Fayed were driven by their regular chauffeur from the airport to central Paris.

“Henri Paul almost killed us, honest to God,” she said. “He was driving way too fast and recklessly, and I was saying ‘Slow down, slow down,’ but nobody’s listening and nobody’s doing anything.

“We went down the freeway and he was still driving crazily and I still don’t understand what we were trying to outrun — I couldn’t see any motorcycles,” she said.

Other witnesses have described paparazzi photographers in cars and on motorcycles pursuing the couple at the time.

“He was driving like a maniac through the traffic,” Daniels said. “He drove from the left-hand lane all the way across the freeway to the offside ramp and the Range Rover almost tipped over and I was sure we were all going to die.”

Daniels also disputed assertions by Mohamed Al Fayed that his son and the princess had decided to marry and died a day before the intended announcement of an engagement. And she rejected asserts that Diana was pregnant with Fayed’s baby.

“Look, nobody will ever know if they would have hooked up,” Daniels said.

“It was too soon. They had just met. They were having fun getting to know each other, and to this day I cannot believe at all that Dodi would have been premature in a situation like this to ask her to marry him. I do not believe that.”

As for the alleged pregnancy, Daniels said: “She was not pregnant. Period.”

Al Fayed, a multimillionaire businessman, contends that his son and Diana were killed in a plot orchestrated by the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, in order to prevent Diana from marrying a Muslim.