Jeremy Renner gave his first interview after being crushed by a snowplow on New Year’s Day, detailing the horrific scene which left the actor with over 30 broken bones.
Renner explained that he and his adult nephew, Alex were trying to tow a Ford Raptor out of the snow with his 14,330-pound Sno-Cat. As it began to slide on ice, Renner stepped out of the cab and onto the track of plow to look for his nephew, fearing he was in its rear path. After failing to secure the parking brake, Renner lost his footing and got taken under the tracks where he was crushed between the vehicle and icy concrete.
“I just happened to be the dummy standing on the dang track a little bit, seeing if my nephew was there. You shouldn’t be outside the vehicle when you’re operating it, you know what I mean? It’s like driving a car with one foot out of the car,” Renner said. “But it is what it was. And it’s my mistake, and I paid for it.”
“That’s when I screamed, by the way, when I went under the thing,” Renner said. “‘Not today, mother—-er!’ is what I screamed. Sorry for the language.”
Renner said he remembered “all of” the pain. “I was awake through every moment. It’s exactly what you would imagine it would feel like,” he said. “It is hard to imagine what that feels like, but when you look at the machine and you look at — I was on asphalt and ice. I wish I was on snow. It felt like someone took the wind out of you. Too many things are going on in the body to feel pain, it’s everything. It’s like if your soul could have pain.”
Recounting his wounds, Renner said he could “see my eye with my other eye.”
Alex found neighbor, Rich Kovach standing in his garage at a nearby house. Kovach and his partner, Barb Fletcher arrived to help keep the Hawkeye star alive for 21 minutes before paramedics could arrive to the snow-ridden area.
“When I looked at his head, it appeared to me to be cracked wide open and I could see white. I don’t know if that was his skull, maybe just my imagination, but that is what I thought I saw. So I knew it was extremely serious,” Kovach said. “He had some blood coming out of his ears, I know for sure, and then his eye, it looked like it had been punched out.”
Fletcher added, “At one point, he just got a clammy feel to him and he turned this gray-green color. I really feel he did pass away for a couple seconds. I really do.”
Renner was finally airlifted to a Reno hospital. The extent of his injuries was so serious that he penned end of life instructions and a farewell to his family. “I’m writing down notes in my phone to–last words to my family,” a teary Renner said. “Don’t let me live on tubes on a machine–if my existence is going to be on drugs and painkillers, let me go now.”
Renner’s injuries included eight broken ribs (in 14 places), broken right knee and right ankle, broken left ankle and tibia, broken right clavicle, and broken right shoulder. He also suffered a collapsed lung, pierced liver from one of the broken ribs, as well as multiple face fractures of the eye socket, jaw, and mandible.
Thank you @DianeSawyer from my family and myself …. https://t.co/8apw0O5Xps
— Jeremy Renner (@JeremyRenner) April 7, 2023
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