Doctor worked in vain to save woman in Paris tunnel wreck. The next day, he found out she was Diana

French doctor Frederic Mailliez, the first physician on the scene of Princess Diana’s fatal car accident in Paris 20 years ago, says he gave first aid to the victims before knowing who he was treating.

Mailliez was off-duty when he drove into the Alma road tunnel on August 31, 1997, a few seconds after the high-speed crash.

He wondered “why there were so many journalists around the Mercedes as I was giving first aid.” It was only when he turned on his television the next morning that he learned the answer, Mailliez recounted Tuesday.

Diana was pronounced dead a few hours after the crash that occurred while she and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, were being chauffeured by an intoxicated driver and pursued by photographers. A bodyguard was the car’s sole survivor.

On that summer night, Mailliez, an emergency doctor, was driving along the Seine river and approaching the tunnel when he saw a smoky accident scene ahead. He stopped and went to investigate.

When he opened a door of the crumpled Mercedes, he saw four people, two of them in cardiac arrest. The other two, including the woman he would later find out was Diana, were still alive.