LOS ANGELES: Actor Jeremy Renner, who has been recovering from injuries sustained in a threatening snowplow accident, recently talked about the incident in detail.
In an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer, Renner detailed exactly how the January 1 incident occurred, revealing that he was run over by his 14,330-pound Sno-Cat after attempting to jump back in the vehicle to save his nephew, Variety reported.
Thank you @DianeSawyer from my family and myself …. https://t.co/8apw0O5Xps
— Jeremy Renner (@JeremyRenner) April 7, 2023Renner said that he and his 27-year-old nephew, Alex, were attempting to tow a Ford Raptor out of the snow with his snow plow. As Alex undid the chain connecting the two vehicles after successfully getting it out of the snow, Renner's plow began to slide on the ice. Worried for his nephew's safety, Renner stuck one foot out of the plow to look back at Alex, neglecting to set the parking brake. That's when he lost his footing and fell out of the vehicle's cab.
"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. But it is what it was. And it's my mistake, and I paid for it," Renner said.
Afraid that the vehicle would roll back and "sandwich" Alex with the truck, Renner attempted to jump back into the Sno-Cat to disengage it -- at which point he was run over.
"That's when I screamed, by the way, when I went under the thing," Renner said. "'Not today, motherfucker!' is what I screamed. Sorry for the language."
Renner admitted that he had even considered end-of-life decisions with his family and kept his daughter from seeing him right after the accident, The Hollywood Reporter reported.
"Don't let me live on tubes on a machine," Renner said of a conversation with his family. "If my existence is going to be on drugs and painkillers, let me go now."
Renner was not the only one who thought he was going to die.
"At one point I was holding his head -- I wouldn't take my eyes off of him because I didn't want him to drift off," Barb Fletcher, Renner's neighbour and one of the first to come to his aid," told Sawyer. "And at one point, he just got a clammy feel to him and he turned this gray-green color. And I feel in my heart like I lost him for a second. He closed his eyes. I really do feel like he passed away for a few seconds."
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"It was the blood, the amount of blood, he was just in so much pain and the sounds that were coming out of him," said Richard Kovatch, Renner's neighbour and Fletcher's partner, who noted the actor was in a "dire" state when he was found. "There was so much blood in the snow, and then 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 it was just my imagination, but that's what I thought I saw."
Painful memories of the accident still plague his mind.
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"Last night, I didn't sleep for shit knowing I was going to have to talk about it today. I have no regrets. I'd do it again," he said, adding, "I refuse to have that be a trauma and be a negative experience. That is a man that I'm proud of because I wouldn't let that happen to my nephew. I shift the narrative of being victimized, making a mistake, or anything else. I refuse to be fucking haunted by that memory that way," he shared.
Meanwhile, on the work front, Renner's show 'Rennervations' is all set to be out on April 11.
