An American filmmaker was killed and another journalist injured on Sunday when Russian troops opened fire on the town of Irpin, northwest of the capital of Kyiv, CBS News reported. The body of Brent Renaud, 50, was photographed and posted online by Andriy Nebytov, the lead of Kyiv's police force. Renaud's passport and New York Times media credentials were included in the graphic photo.
Stated in the Facebook post (sic):
“The occupants cynical kill even journalists of the international media who try to show the truth about the inaction of Russian troops in Ukraine.
A 51-year-old world-renowned media correspondent was shot in Irpen today
New York Times. Another journalist is injured. Now they are trying to remove the victim from the war zone.
Of course, the profession of a journalist is a risk, but US citizen Brent Renaud paid his life for trying to highlight the aggressor's ingenuity, cruelty and ruthlessness.”
Renaud won a Peabody award for a Vice News documentary he produced along with his brother Craig Renaud about a Chicago school that "serves students with severe emotional disorders, who have been expelled (frequently more than once) from the city’s other public schools."
“We are deeply saddened to hear of Brent Renaud’s death,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a New York Times spokeswoman said in a statement. “Brent was a talented filmmaker.”
He was not on assignment for the Times at the time of his death, according to the newspaper.
Visual journalist Juan Arredondo, the other journalist injured in the shooting, told a reporter that he was crossing the first bridge in Irpin with Brent to film other refugees leaving and someone offered to give them a ride. "And we crossed a checkpoint and they start shooting at us, so the driver turned around and they kept shooting,” Arrendondo said in Bloomberg video shared by journalist Alejandro Alvarez.
Arrendondo said he saw Brent shot in the neck but they were separated soon after. "My friend is Brent Renaud, and he's been shot and left behind," Arrendondo said in the video.
Warning: The below video shows Arredondo receiving medical treatment.
Brent Renaud was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and he covered cartel violence in Mexico and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with his brother, according to their website.
In an op-ed for The Boston Globe entitled "Black Lives Matter in a haven for white supremacists," Brent Ranaud detailed his coverage of a Black Lives Matter protest in Harrison, Arkansas 10 days after George Floyd was murdered by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Brent wrote:
“For an alarming number of extremists, this town in the Ozark Mountains, one of the most beautiful places in America, is a white man’s paradise. For many Black people, it’s still referred to as a sundown town, a place you should never get caught after dark.
When I was a kid growing up in Arkansas, we would pass by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan adopt-a-highway signs on road trips near here. I’m white, but their casual existence terrified me. ”
Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation, described Brent as "gifted and kind" in a tweet. “He was killed today outside Kiev, and the world and journalism are lesser for it,” Lipinski wrote. “We are heartsick.”
PBS special correspondent Simon Ostrovsky tweeted: "Gutting to hear of the death Brent Renaud in Irpin, Ukraine today. A filmmaker without parallel who was working on a global film project about refugees. My thoughts are with his brother and his friends and family."
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