Terry Prone: Harry and Meghan's dramatic, distressing and mysteriously unnoticed car chase 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend the Los Angeles Lakers' Game 4 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies Monday, April 24, 2023, in Los Angeles. Picture: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

The minute the statement popped up, the adrenaline rush took over in global media. Everybody wanted to know more.

What was initially reported was that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry had been involved in a “near catastrophic” car chase in New York after she received an award from the MS Foundation. Her mother was in the car with them when paparazzi, in an emotive echo of what killed his mother, chased them for intimate shots. Several blacked out vehicles were involved. Perhaps as many as six. And those vehicles nearly caused crashes, broke red lights and drove on the footpath. For two hours, this car chase continued.

It’s an awful possibility and seems a tad unfair, given that the pair had arrived at the event and departed from it using the front door, where Meghan was barracked by a reporter with an English accent, asking how it felt to be part of two broken families. The point about coming in the front door and leaving that way is that it allowed the media to get whatever shots they legitimately wanted. And they did, allowing early reports – with illustrations - of the cost of Meghan’s golden dress, heels and handbag. But the evil snappers weren’t satisfied, and set out to chase and intimidate the ducal couple in order to get up close and personal pictures. The two, who were headed to overnight at the home of a friend, didn’t want to blow the privacy of the friend, and so perhaps took a more roundabout route to confuse the photographers.

If it happened, it was certainly emotionally abusive on the part of the paparazzi, although it is worth pointing out that Princess Diana died because the car in which she was travelling was being driven by a man who was drunk. That said, the paparazzi certainly contributed to the tragedy. Photographers are at least as hungry as they were, back then, and Meghan and Harry are top-of-the-line celebs. So you can figure they might be pursued by snappers for whom the official photo opportunity might not be enough.

But here’s the thing.

Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex leave The Ziegfeld Theatre on May 16, 2023 in New York City. Picture: James Devaney/GC Images

At the time when the paparazzi were so lethal, Lionel Richie publicly commented that his daughter Nicole (then at least as famous as Meghan is now) never had to call him to say she was on her way to visit him; the helicopters overhead would notify him. Similarly, when O.J. Simpson was being pursued by the cops on the highway after the death of his wife, much of America, if not the world, got to watch.

Of course the “near catastrophic” car chase happened at night time, which changes things. But it’s still passing strange that New York’s finest never noticed this two-hour drama. The cops, queried about it after the statement emerged, (that statement, itself, coming a day after the events it described,) indicated that they’d love to hear more. 

Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Because if the New York Police Department missed a two-hour hostile chase involving six or eight cars (Meghan and Harry travelling in a convoy), that’s astonishing. Nearly as astonishing as all the vehicles apparently having blacked-out windows. 

Meghan and Harry’s car having blacked-out windows makes sense: makes it more difficult to snap pictures of them. So why didn’t they just sit back and use their phones to work out where the nearest cop-shop was, and pull in there?

Why the snappers’ cars would have blacked-out windows is puzzling, because any photographer wants clear air, ideally, and clear glass as a second choice, in order to get good shots.

The story, as outlined in the Sussex’s statement, is dramatic and distressing. What makes it mystifying is that, until the two went public, nobody, either in media or in New York’s pretty ubiquitous police force, seemed to notice more than half a dozen SUVs pursuing each other in the middle of a heavily trafficked city. Strange.