- NYC's mayor called the paparazzi car chase of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle "reckless."
- Mayor Eric Adams also slammed it as "irresponsible" and warned someone could have been hurt.
New York City's mayor on Wednesday slammed paparazzi photographers involved in a Manhattan car chase of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, as "reckless and irresponsible" while warning that someone could have been hurt in the ordeal.
Harry, Meghan and Meghan's mom, Doria Ragland, were in a "near-catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi" on Tuesday night after they attended a charity event in Manhattan, a spokesperson for the royal couple said.
Mayor Eric Adams commented on the incident during an unrelated press conference on Wednesday and recalled how Harry's mother, Princess Diana, was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being chased in Paris by paparazzi.
"I don't think there's many of us who don't recall how his mom died," Adams said of Diana, adding, "It would be horrific to lose an innocent bystander during the chase like this, and something to have happened to them as well."
Adams also said that two New York Police Department officers "could have been injured" in the chase.
The mayor noted that the Big Apple "is a densely populated city" and called "any type of high-speed chase that involves something of that nature" on the city's streets "inappropriate."
An NYPD spokesman confirmed in a statement to Insider that the police department "assisted the private security team protecting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex" on Tuesday evening.
"There were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging," said the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, Julian Phillips. "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard."
A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan said that the "relentless pursuit" lasted over two hours and "resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians, and two NYPD officers."
Adams said he would get a more in-depth briefing on the incident later Wednesday, but said he found it "hard to believe that there was a two-hour high-speed chase."
"We will find out the exact duration of it," Adams said. "But if it's 10 minutes, a 10-minute chase is extremely dangerous in New York City. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of movement, a lot of people are using our streets."