Diana's Merc 'took off like a plane'

LONDON: As the Diana inquest enters its fifth week, a witness has claimed that the Mercedes carrying the Princess of Wales and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed 'took off like a plane' in busy traffic moments before it crashed in a Paris underpass ten years back, killing the couple.

Stephane Darmon, a motorcyclist who was among Princess Diana's pursuers on the night of her tragic death, also gave a dramatic paparazzo's-eye view of the day to the 11-member jury at the High Court inquest here via videolink from the French capital, the 'Daily Mail' reported on Tuesday.

Darmon, who was hired by a picture agency to ferry photographer Romuald Rat around Paris to take shots of Diana and Dodi, said that after the couple's chauffeur-driven car left the rear exit of the Ritz Hotel to give paparazzi's the slip, he spotted it at traffic lights on Place de la Concorde.

"When the lights turned green, the limousine accelerated radically, it just took off like a plane. Moments later it crashed in the Alma underpass," said the first member of the paparazzi group who agreed to testify at the inquest on the events of August 31, 1997.

Darmon also told the inquest how photographers were involved in a 'fierce fight' with French security men outside the Ritz Hotel on the night of the fatal car crash and the behaviour of 'drunk' driver Henri Paul who he said reminded him of his own alcoholic father.