Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, took refuge at a New York City police station in the middle of a “chaotic” pursuit by photographers, the couple and law enforcement sources said Wednesday.
The pair, together with Meghan’s mother, were followed by photographers after leaving a charity event in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday night.
“This relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians, and two NYPD officers,” a spokesperson for the couple said in a statement.
They added that the “near catastrophic car chase” came “at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi.”
The couple spent Tuesday night in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and didn’t want photographers to know where they were staying, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
Photographers followed the couple for 75 minutes up and down the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, the main thoroughfare of Manhattan’s East Side, sources said.
The traveling party went to the NYPD’s 19th Precinct station house, on East 67th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues, for about 15 minutes before getting into another car and leaving without being followed, sources said.
Law enforcement sources pushed back on any characterization that the incident was near catastrophic, but conceded that the couple’s ride Tuesday night was “a bit chaotic.”
Julian Phillips, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of public information, said officers “assisted the private security team protecting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.”
“There were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging,” Phillips said in a statement. “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard.”
The incident came after the couple attended the Women of Vision Awards and departed New York’s Ziegfeld Ballroom at about 10 p.m., NYPD officials said. Meghan’s mom, Doria Ragland, also attended the event.
It was the first public event the couple had attended since King Charles III’s coronation, which Meghan did not attend. Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, died in a Paris car crash while being pursued by paparazzi in 1997.
“While being a public figure comes with a level of interest from the public, it should never come at the cost of anyone’s safety,” the statement from the couple said Wednesday.
After stepping down as senior royals in January 2020 and moving to California, the couple repeatedly complained about the lengths the media went to pursue them.
“We all know what the British press can be like and it was destroying my mental health,” Harry said in a February 2021 interview on “The Late Late Show With James Corden.”
“This is toxic,” he said, adding the media had created a “really difficult” environment for the couple. “So I did what any husband and what any father would do — I need to get my family out of here.”
Harry has also said that his biggest fear before leaving the royal family was “history repeating itself” with his wife facing the same intense scrutiny as Diana.
Both Harry and Meghan have since won privacy cases against several media outlets, with more still outstanding. Harry has also accused newspapers of using unlawful methods to target him and his family.
He is seeking to overturn a decision by the British government to take away his specialist police protection when he is in the U.K.
