“Shouldn’t be outside the vehicle when you’re operating. It’s kind of like driving a car with your foot outside the car. It is what it was and it’s my mistake and I paid for it.”
Jeremy Renner sat down with Diane Sawyer for his first interview since his near fatal snowcat accident near his Lake Tahoe home on New Year’s Day. During the interview the actor recalled the details leading up to the horrific accident that hospitalized with 30 broken bones and a collapsed lung.
Renner and his nephew had just moved Ford Raptor by hooking it up with chains to a 1988 Pistenbully. They had just unhooked the chains and Renner was turning the snowcat around on the icy sloped road when it began to slide. Renner, concerned that his nephew was too close to the machine and might get run over, stepped one foot onto the snowcats rolling tracks to get a better view and was thrown to the ground.
“I wanted to see where my nephew is, I just happened to be the dummy standing on the dang track a little bit seeing if my nephew’s there.”
He then saw his nephew was in the danger and attempted to jump back into the cat and again stepped on the moving track. He was again thrown to the ground this time run over by the 14,000lbs machine. Thankfully Renner survived the accident and his nephew was unharmed.
We don’t want to beleaguer the obvious fact that his actions were completely against snowcat safety protocols but if there’s any takeaways beyond an appreciation of man’s will to come back from gruesome injuries, its to respect heavy machinery and not to operate it without proper training. WATCH INTERVIEW HERE
