Published 14th Mar, 2022

By Tola Owoyele

On Sunday, Brent Renaud, an award-winning American journalist was shot dead while covering the Russia-Ukraine crisis in Irpin, outside Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

Renaud was in a car with other journalists when Russian troops opened fire on them. He died after being shot in the neck, while one of the people with him got shot in the back.

Before his death, Renaud had not only worked for notable media outfits like the New York Times, but had also worked in conflict zones and dangerous spots around the world.

In its tribute to Renaud, Associated Press (AP) described him as “an acclaimed filmmaker who travelled to some of the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world for documentaries that transported audiences to little-known places of suffering”.

But beyond the outpouring of sympathy and tributes, who exactly is Brent Renaud?

BORN IN TENNESSE, RAISED IN ARKANSAS

Renaud was born in October 1971 in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, both in the United States of America. His father, Louis Renaud, was a salesman, while his mother, Georgann Freasier, was a social worker.

Renaud graduated from Southern Methodist University (SMU), Texas, in 1994, majoring in English literature and minoring in sociology.

Thear Suzuki, Renaud’s former colleague at SMU, described him as a quiet and contemplative man who was more mature than other college students.

MENTOR TO MANY AT-RISK CHILDREN IN DALLAS NEIGHBOURHOOD

Some of the threat-risk children Renaud mentored

While in SMU, Renaud mentored at-risk children in an Old East Dallas neighbourhood in Texas.

Suzuki, who also took part in the mentorship program with Renaud, said the empathy and compassion that would define the journalist’s career were apparent during his time with the children.

“He absolutely loved the kids and their families,” Suzuki said.

Renaud would keep track of some of the kids for a few years after graduating from SMU, visiting to take them out to eat or to the water park.

“He always thought about them,” Suzuki continued. “He always talked about them, and I can’t help but to think he wish he could have done more for them. I hope, with the time he spent with them, they somehow felt the love from him, and that that’s helping them make good choices in life.”

THE MAN WHO SEES PEOPLE WHO ARE SOMETIMES IGNORED BY OTHERS

As a journalist and film-maker, Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, the drug war in Mexico, the political turmoil in Egypt and Libya, and extremism in Africa.

Early in his career, Renaud completed a documentary focusing on Paul Thai, a young Cambodian refugee. Thai would later become a police officer in Dallas.

He would later work on more projects, focusing on global refugee crisis.

“I think of him as someone who sees people who are sometimes ignored by others. And I felt like he saw me when we first met,” said Suzuki, who also left Cambodia as a refugee at age eight.

“He was the type of person to invest the time to tell the story of people who didn’t think we mattered to anybody,” she said.

Renaud last texted Suzuki on her birthday in February. He told her he was planning refugee story reporting trips to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo the last time they spoke.

AWARD WINNER WITH BROTHER CRAIG

Alongside Craig, his brother, Renaud won a Peabody Award for “Last Chance High”, an HBO series about a school for at-risk youths in Chicago.

The brothers’ achievements also include two DuPont-Columbia journalism awards and productions for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, the New York Times, and VICE News.

He was a 2019 Nieman fellow at Harvard University and a visiting distinguished professor at the Centre for Ethics in Journalism, University of Arkansas.

DEATH WHILE WORKING FOR REFUGEES

Renaud died while gathering materials for a report about refugees who were caught up in Russia’s on-going invasion of Ukraine.

According to Juan Arredondo, a fellow American journalist, who was also in the car at the time Renaud got shot, the two were traveling in a vehicle toward the Irpin checkpoint when they were attacked by Russian soldiers.

“We crossed the first bridge in Irpin. We were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car. Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us,” said Arredondo, who also got shot in the back.

Christof Putzel, one of Renaud’s colleagues, described him as one of the most respected independent producers of his era.

“This guy was the absolute best. He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone,” Putzel said.

TIME released a statement deploring Renaud’s death and saying he had been in the region working on a TIME Studios project focused on the global refugee crisis.

“We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud,” the statement said. “Our hearts are with all of Brent’s loved ones.”

Jon Alpert, a documentary filmmaker and co-founder of New York’s Downtown Community Television Centre, described Renaud as a ”really nice guy with extraordinary courage”, who put his life on the line to film things people needed to see”.

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