American filmmaker Brent Renaud killed by Russian forces in Ukraine

Brent Renaud, an acclaimed filmmaker who traveled to some of the darkest corners of the world for documentaries died Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle in Ukraine, reported The Associated Press.

The 50-year-old Little Rock, Arkansas, native was gathering material for a report about refugees when his vehicle was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, just outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said the area has sustained intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.

Renaud was one of the most respected independent producers of his era, said Christof Putzel, a filmmaker and close friend who had received a text from Renaud just three days before his death.

“This guy was the absolute best,” Putzel told The Associated Press via phone from New York City. ”He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone.”

The details of Renaud’s death were not made immediately clear by Ukrainian authorities, but American journalist Juan Arredondo said the two were traveling in a vehicle toward the Irpin checkpoint when they were both shot.

Arredondo, speaking from a hospital in Kyiv, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that Renaud was hit in the neck. Camilli told the AP that Arredondo himself had been hit in the lower back.

“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,” Arredondo told Camilli in a video interview shared with the AP.

A statement from Kyiv regional police said that Russian troops opened fire on the car. Hours after the shooting of Renaud, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city.

The U.S. State Department said it would not comment on Renaud’s death out of respect for his family members but that consular assistance was being offered to them.

The U.S. State Department condemned attacks on news professionals and others documenting the conflict.

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.”

Among other assignments, Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya and extremism in Africa.

He is survived by his brother Craig, Craig’s wife, Mami, and a nephew, 11-year-old Taiyo. - AP