Harry and Meghan’s New York taxi driver said his personal experience of driving the pair doesn’t fit with the claim they were in a “near catastrophic car chase”.
Sukhcharn “Sunny” Singh, the New York taxi driver who drove renegade royals Harry and Meghan for a brief part of their “car chase” in the city, said he didn’t witness life-threatening behaviour during his time behind the wheel with the royals paying the fare. He follows other statements by NYC Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD suggesting a slightly less violent ride home after an awards ceremony.
The pair had described their encounter with paparazzi earlier this week as resulting in a “near catastrophic car chase” in a statement released on Wednesday, prompting comparisons with the chase that ultimately killed Harry’s mother, Diana the Princess of Wales in Paris in 1997.
Contradicting earlier claims, however, Singh has said that the royals may be employing some sort of poetic licence in their retelling of the incident. “I don’t think I would call it a chase,” the NYC cabbie told the Washington Post. “I never felt like I was in danger. It wasn’t like a car chase in a movie. They were quiet and seemed scared but it’s New York — it’s safe.”
Singh added that any sort of wild actions must have taken place before the royals ended up in his vehicle, adding that the pair “did seem nervous”.
However, speaking on the allegedly “near catastrophic” nature of the day’s events, the driver said that he did not think such a claim was “true”.
“I think that’s all — you know — exaggerated and stuff like that, so, don’t read too much into that,” he laughed. According to the Associated Press, Harry and Meghan only boarded a taxi after they had spent several minutes sheltering inside a police station “waiting for the situation to de-escalate”.
Sunny was not the only individual to cast doubt on the claim made by the royals, with Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, describing the idea that the pair were involved in a two-hour high-speed chase with the press in New York traffic “hard to believe”.
“I would find it hard to believe that there was a two-hour high-speed chase,” the Democrat remarked, nevertheless adding that even a car chase of a short duration would be “extremely dangerous”.
“Any type of high-speed chase that involves something of that nature is inappropriate,” he added, describing law enforcement as only engaging in such chases in extreme circumstances, and that journalists should not be chasing celebrities in such a manner just to get good pictures.
The New York Police Department had previously said “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard”, but that transport was “challenging” because of the presence of numerous photographers.
Nevertheless, the true facts of the case are yet to emerge. That may yet come in the form of security camera footage covering the route of the Sussex’s two-hour ‘chase’: New York is, after all, one of the most heavily surveilled cities in America.
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