Diana then asked him: “My God, what’s happened?”
Moments later the royal suffered a cardiac arrest.
Gourmelon told The Sun: “I massaged her heart and a few seconds later she started breathing again. It was a relief of course because, as a first responder, you want to save lives — and that’s what I thought I had done.
“To be honest I thought she would live. As far as I knew when she was in the ambulance she was alive and I expected her to live. But I found out later she had died in hospital. It was very upsetting.
“I know now that there were serious internal injuries, but the whole episode is still very much in my mind. And the memory of that night will stay with me forever.
“I had no idea then that it was Princess Diana. It was only when she had been put into the ambulance that one of the paramedics told me it was her.”
Despite doctors’ best efforts, Diana was declared dead at 4am local time, 3am in the UK, at Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris.
