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Jeremy Renner says he refuses to be “haunted” by memory of snowplow accident

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ABC News

(NOTE LANGUAGE) Jeremy Renner is refusing to be “haunted” by the memory of his life-threatening snowplow accident.

In his first interview since the accident, Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview — A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph, airing Thursday, April 6, at 10 p.m. ET on ABC, the Avengers star reflects on the accident and shares how he wants to move forward.

“I shifted the narrative of it being victimized or making a mistake or anything else,” he said. “I refuse to be f****** haunted by that memory that way.”

On New Year’s Day of 2023, firefighters and paramedics responded to a 911 call regarding Renner. The caller, Renner’s neighbor, Rich Kovach, told the 911 dispatcher on the phone that Renner had been “run over by a snowcat” and asked them to send help.

“It was blood, the amount of blood, and then he was — he was just in such pain,” Kovach told Sawyer. “And the sounds that were coming out of him — and 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, if it — maybe it was just my imagination but that’s what I thought I saw.”

Also on the scene with Renner was his nephew Alex Fries, 27, who said he was holding onto Renner’s arm in an attempt to help him breathe.

Renner said that he “was awake through every moment.”

“I started moving my legs,” he said. “I said, ‘Oh, that one — that one’s really messed up. Oh yeah…that’s gonna be a problem.'”

“And I’m thinkin’ like, ‘What’s my body look like? Am I just gonna be like a spine in a brain like a science experiment?'” Renner recalled.

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