Bodyguard crash survivor now protects vaccine giant
BODYGUARD Trevor Rees-Jones, the only survivor of the crash in which Princess Diana died, has rebuilt his life and is global head of security for AstraZeneca, the Mail can reveal.
Despite suffering appalling injuries and severe memory loss, he has recovered sufficiently to land a huge job with the pharmaceutical giant behind one of the world’s most effective Covid-19 vaccines.
It is not known if his role involves protecting key personnel involved in the vaccine programme, or guarding the firm’s laboratories and intellectual property.
The former member of the AlFayed security team, who now calls himself Trevor Rees, was travelling in the front passenger seat of the Mercedes and was trapped in the wreckage, conscious but with severe facial trauma. He was placed in an induced coma for ten days.
It took skilful reconstruction by surgeons, working from an old photograph, who used 150 titanium parts to piece him back together.
Mr Rees, 53, was also left with profound amnesia for several months. Dr Maurice Lipsedge, an expert psychiatrist commissioned by Lord Stevens’s Operation Paget inquiry, said Mr Rees had ‘very limited recall’ of what happened immediately before and after the crash and this was unlikely to ever change.
Mr Rees left his job with Mohamed Al-Fayed the following year. He published his own account of his experiences, with help from a ghost writer, in 000 in a book called The Bodyguard’s Story.
His first post after returning to work was with the United Nations in its department of peacekeeping.
He also spent six years with the US-based oil operations company, Halliburton, working his way up to director. His LinkedIn entry describes him as being based in Shrewsbury and having experience in international operations. Both AstraZeneca and Mr Rees, via his employers, declined to comment.