Jeremy Renner details gruesome injuries from snowplow accident: 'I could see my eye with the other eye'
Jeremy Renner gave his first interview since nearly dying in a snowplow accident earlier this year and he shared new, harrowing details from the event.
In Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview – A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph, the actor revealed his ribcage was rebuilt with metal after the Jan. 1 incident while his jaw is being held together with rubber bands. Metal plates were put in his face to support his eye socket and he has titanium rods in one of his legs. Renner said he's grateful to be alive and remembers "all of" the pain.
"I could see my eye with the other eye," The Avengers star shared.
Renner took blame for the accident, even though he was trying to save his nephew, Alex Fries, from getting run over.
The Hawkeye star was freeing his nephew's truck when the machinery began to slide in the snow. Renner, who said he'd driven the Pistenbully many times helping neighbors, opened the door to look out and make sure Fries was safe as the 27-year-old was "sandwiched" in between the car and snowplow. Renner had one foot on the rolling tracks and didn't set the parking break.
"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 explained. "But it is what it was. And it's my mistake — and I paid for it."
Renner tried to jump back inside the snowplow, or snowcat, to "disengage it" and was crushed.
"That's when I screamed, by the way, when I went under the thing: 'Not today, motherf***er!' is what I screamed. Sorry for the language," the Marvel star shared.
Renner remembers being face down and getting run over.
"I was awake through every moment. It's exactly what you would imagine it would feel like. 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."
Three people were there in the aftermath of the accident: Fries and Renner's neighbors, Barb Fletcher and Richard Kovatch. All of them were emotional as they talked to Sawyer for ABC News.
"I didn't think he was alive... it was pretty terrifying to see the person you look up to so much to be like that," Fries recalled. After he saw his uncle in a pool of blood, he ran for help. Kovatch, who lived nearby, and his partner spoke to Sawyer about Renner's "dire" condition.
"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," Fletcher said, emotional as she recalled that moment. "And I just tried to keep him awake... I really do feel like he passed away for a few seconds."
It's Kovatch's voice you hear on that 911 call and he said he feared Renner was dead "because of that color" of his body.
"The amount of blood — he was just in so much pain and the sounds that were coming out of him," Kovatch explained. "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."
Renner, who celebrated his 52nd birthday from the hospital, is working on his physical and mental recovery. He told Sawyer he refuses to let this "trauma" be "a negative experience."
"Last night, I didn't sleep for s*** knowing I was going to have to talk about it today. I have no regrets. I'd do it again," he explained, adding: "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, or making a mistake, or anything else. I refuse to be f***ing haunted by that memory that way."
