Death......of PD.........

Main article: Death of Diana, Princess of Wales

The entrance to the Pont d'Alma tunnel, the site of Diana's fatal car accident.
On 31 August 1997, Diana died after a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris along with Dodi Al-Fayed and the acting security manager of the Hôtel Ritz Paris, Henri Paul, who was instructed to drive the hired Mercedes-Benz through Paris in order to elude the paparazzi. Their black 1994 Mercedes-Benz S280 crashed into the thirteenth pillar of the tunnel. The two-lane tunnel was built without metal barriers in front of the pillars. None of the four occupants wore seat belts

The journalists, who had been trailing the car, arrived at the Alma underpass at different stages. Serge Arnal, Christian Martinez and Stéphane Darmon appear to have arrived first, quickly followed by Serge Benhamou. Records supplied by mobile telephone operators Itinéris and SFR support Serge Arnal's claim that he attempted to call the emergency services. Film seized from the cameras of Christian Martinez and Serge Arnal showed that they were taking photographs of the car and/or the occupants almost immediately after arrival at the scene – there were no emergency services near the car visible in their photographs.

Blood analysis showed that Henri Paul was illegally intoxicated with alcohol while driving. He drove at high speed in order to evade the pursuing journalists. Tests showed he had consumed amounts of alcohol three times that of the French legal limit. Fayed's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, who was in the passenger seat, was closest to the point of impact and yet he was the only survivor of the crash. Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly, and Diana—unbelted in the back seat- slid forward during the impact and, having been violently thrown around the interior, "submarined" under the seat in front of her, suffering serious damage to her heart with subsequent internal bleeding. She was eventually, after considerable time, transported by ambulance to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, suffering two episodes of cardiac arrest on the way. Despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage, she died at 4 a.m. local time. Her funeral on 6 September 1997 was broadcast and watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide.

An eighteen month French judicial investigation concluded in 1999 that the car crash that killed Diana was caused by Paul, who lost control of the car at high speed while intoxicated.
Since February 1999, Dodi's father, Mohamed Al-Fayed (the owner of the Hôtel Ritz, for which Paul worked) has claimed that the crash was a result of a conspiracy, and has since contended that the crash was orchestrated by MI6 on the instructions of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Fayed's claims that the crash was a result of a conspiracy were dismissed by a French judicial investigation, and Operation Paget, a Metropolitan police inquiry that concluded in 2006.
An inquest headed by Lord Justice Scott Baker into the deaths of Diana and Dodi Fayed began at the Royal Courts of Justice, London on 2 October 2007 and was a continuation of the original inquest that began in 2004. A jury decided on 7 April 2008 that Diana had been unlawfully killed by the grossly negligent driving of chauffeur Henri Paul and press photographers. The following day Mr. Fayed announced he would end his 10 year campaign for the sake of the late Princess of Wales's children.