Eight ribs were broken in 14 places. Both ankles, one knee and one tibia were broken. Broken shoulder, collarbone, eye socket and jawbone. The lung collapsed and the liver was punctured. This is what actor Jeremy Renner suffered in January when his snow cat PistenBully rolled on top of him while he was working to get a family member’s car out of the snow near his home in Washoe County, Nevada. Now, Renner is speaking publicly about that near-death moment for the first time in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer — including a heartbreaking recording of the 911 call shortly after the incident.
“I would do it again,” Renner told Sawyer. “Because it was aimed right at my grandson.”
In case you lost it:
The horrifying event occurred when Renner set his snow cat on fire trying to rescue a vehicle stuck on a private no-till road in the Nevada mountains. Renner has once posted a picture of my snow cat on Instagramshows the steep and snowy road leading to his Nevada home.
As Renner recounts, on the day of the accident, he climbed out of the Snowcat, but the vehicle began to roll away, toward his nephew. When the actor tried to climb back into the cockpit, he was dragged under the wheels of a PistenBully – a heavy vehicle used to groom ski runs, weighing nearly 15,000 pounds.
Now, after months of recovery, Renner maintains an admirably positive outlook on the incident that nearly cost him his life. As he told Diane Sawyer, “I lost a lot of flesh in this experience, but I was refueled and filled with love, and titanium.”
Renner’s full interview airs on Thursday, April 6 at 10:00 p.m. EST on ABC. Here’s a sneak peek:
