A new animation has detailed the moment actor Jeremy Renner was crushed by his 14,000-pound snowplow near his Lake Tahoe home on New Year’s Day.
In his first interview since the near-fatal incident, Renner recalled the horrifying ordeal and how he was hospitalized with 30 broken bones and a collapsed lung.
The simulation, which was seen for the first time during his ABC News interview with Diane Sawyer, shows Renner operating the 1988 Pistenbully snowcat, as his nephew, Alex Fries, hooks a chain from the snowplow to a Ford Raptor they were attempting to move to the snow-cleared street.
“I led in the snowcat with the truck behind it to finish off the last 20-30 yards of the driveway to get it onto the paved area,” Renner told Sawyer about his mission to clear all the snow from the driveway leading up to the house.
Once parked on the street, Fries unhooked the truck from the snowcat, as Renner began to turn around on the icy sloped road.
“I did turn it around, correct,” Renner confirmed. “The cat kept sliding on the icy road because we’re on the paved area but it’s all ice and it kept sliding.”
Concerned that his nephew was too close to the plow, Renner looked outside the cab, keeping one foot inside while placing his other foot on the snowcat’s wet steel rolling tracks — and forgetting to set the parking brake.
“I’m standing on this,” Renner says pointing to the snowcat’s rolling tracks, “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.”
“Shouldn’t be [outside] the vehicle when you’re operating. It’s kind of like driving a car with your foot outside the car,” the “Avengers” star says. “It is what it was and it’s my mistake and I paid for it.”
Renner says the incident all happened fast, not remembering everything but he does know his foot did slip and he fell off the side of the plow as it began to roll.
The Oscar winner attempted to hop back into the cab when he realized his nephew could become sandwiched between the moving plow and truck.
The plow’s tracks pushed Renner forward, causing him to fall flat onto the snow as the plow barreled toward him.
“That’s when I screamed by the way, when I went under the thing ‘not today, motherf–ker,” Renner recalled.
Renner couldn’t remember what exactly led to him laying on the ground but remembers the pain of it happening.
“I was awake through every moment,” Renner said. “It’s exactly like you imagined it would feel like, it’s hard to imagine what that feels like, but if you look at the machine and I was on asphalt and ice. I wish I was on snow.”
“Felt like someone took the wind out of you,” Renner recalls of what he felt. “Too many things are going on in the body to feel, pain is everything, it’s like if your soul could have pain.”
The machine rolled over Renner’s entire body, starting from his feet and going up to his head.
“I can see my eye with my other eye, and I remember just seeing stars and a little tar line whatever in this eye,” Renner said pointing to his left eye.
The machine continued down the hill, with Fries still in the path of danger, he hopped into the truck but the snowcat caught him and pushed the truck into a 7-foot snowbank, bringing both the Ford and plow to a stop.
“I look out the window and I see half of the snow machine and then I just perfectly see him in a pool of blood coming from his head,” Fries says of seeing his uncle for the first time.
Not thinking, he ran to his uncle’s side but feared the worse had happened.
“He wasn’t responsive because when I ran up to him I didn’t think he was alive,” Fries recalls of the horrifying incident.
Fries was able to find out at one of the neighbor’s houses, who called 911 as first responders rushed to the aid of the injured actor.
Renner was airlifted to a Reno-area hospital before undergoing multiple surgeries for his injuries.