Princess Diana's former bodyguard supports Meghan Markle skipping Gracie Awards

Princess Diana's former bodyguard Lee Sansum said Meghan Markle made a wise choice by skipping the Gracie Awards on May 23 as the paparazzi would have only hounded her.

The Duchess of Sussex was named a digital media national winner at the 49th annual awards held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles. The ceremony took place days after the duchess, her mother Doria Ragland, and Prince Harry were involved in a "near catastrophic" car chase involving paparazzi after they attended the Women of Vision Awards in New York City on May 16.

But Meghan Markle did not personally attend the Gracie Awards, a decision that Sansun supports as he claimed that "the paparazzi would have been insane."

He told Fox News Digital, "People will provoke a chase to get the picture. And it might not be the cameraman or the camera people, should I say. But hey, let's pay a couple cars here to just . . . be decoys and just to really give them something just to get reaction."

Sansun was hired to protect Princess Diana in the summer of 1997 while she was dating Egyptian film producer Dodi Fayed. He said of the paparazzi, "They just want to snap one shot, one shot, that's got, 'Oh Meghan's lost the plot.' So . . . they create this environment."

The former bodyguard further explained how paparazzi will oftentimes create situations just to get what he called their "money shot." He continued, "I've been in this situation where . . . people are going to make money out of it, and they're to try to get the car to do something crazy or just even hit something, you know, hit another car. Can you imagine that?"

"Meghan's driver running away from the paparazzi hit this poor individual? If I was giving her security advice at this moment in time, I would have said, 'Meghan, leave it. Let's just let this simmer down. Just leave it.'"

Sansun also believes that the public only got "a part of the story" regarding the car chase saying, "I think really from the information that we're reading — that is put out by the press and whoever — I think we're only getting a part of the story. Whether it's entirely the correct story, it's a version of the story."

He added, "But from my experience in the past, the paparazzi, the people taking the photographs... they are so intrusive. And eventually, it just breaks you down."

"I find it absolutely crazy that these people are allowed to do this and put the public at risk, chasing people. We say 'chasing' we assume that they're going really fast. They don't have to be going fast, but they're cutting people off... They're advancing through traffic in an aggressive manner to catch a vehicle, to take a photograph that is going to make them money. And it's putting people at risk."

The former royal bodyguard was part of the security detail tasked with protecting Princess Diana, Prince Harry, and Prince William during their vacation in Saint-Tropez, France. He then cited Princess Diana's car crash as a "classic example" of a paparazzi chase that ended in tragedy. The princess, Fayed, and their chauffeur Henri Paul were killed when their vehicle crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris while they were fleeing from photographers.

A spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle told the publication in a statement that the car chase happened "at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi." Their representative called it a "relentless pursuit" that lasted over two hours and "resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians, and two NYPD officers." The representative added, "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."