David Michael Blundy, 44, a tall, blue-eyed, darkly handsome foreign correspondent, decided just a few months ago to learn Spanish so he could cover Central America.
He was on a street in San Salvador Friday when a stray bullet killed him.A few weeks ago, Blundy was in Colombia covering the drug war. He called his Spanish teacher in Washington, D.C., angrily demanding a refund for all the money he had spent on Spanish lessons.
"I can't understand a bloody thing!" he said. "Either you come down here and translate or I want my money back."
Blundy, a British reporter based in Washington for The Sunday Correspondent of London, a new weekly newspaper, decided to go to El Salvador after the rebel offensive began Nov. 11. He was a reporter and that was big news.
He went out Friday morning to cover the war with a group of other journalists. Matias Recart, a Chilean photographer, said they were standing on the street near an army patrol in the working-class neighborhood of Mejicanos.
"Everything was quiet, so we weren't really worried. Still, I was wearing a bullet-proof vest," Recart said by telephone from San Salvador. "Suddenly there was a burst of machine-gun fire and we ran behind some cars.
"David was hit by one of the first rounds. When the shooting stopped, we grabbed him and ran to the taxi. Bill Gentile (an American photographer) was yelling at him to be calm.
"We had a taxi, but the idiot driver got scared and left, so we put David into a Spanish television van and took him to the hospital."
Recart said it wasn't clear who shot Blundy.
Doctors at Rosales Hospital in San Salvador said the bullet entered Blundy's right side, tore through the lung and lodged near his heart. He had at least two heart attacks at the hospital and died.
It seems trite to say he died doing what he loved, but he did. His apartment in Washington looked like a newsroom: littered with old newspapers, stacks of clippings, books, cigarette butts and empty coffee cups.
He had worked at some of the best British newspapers and recently left the Sunday Times after a colleague pointed out that he was the oldest person on the staff.
Blundy was a favorite dinner guest in Washington political circles; he paid for his meals with enormously entertaining stories. Even when he was dressed in what he considered high fashion - black jeans, black tennis shoes and a wrinkled shirt - he was welcomed in the best restaurants.
He was born in the a working-class area of London called Elephant and Castle. His father owned a second-hand furniture store. His parents are dead.
His marriage ended in divorce. His oldest daughter, Anna, is a student at Oxford. A second daughter, Charlotte, 2, lives with her mother in Britain.
Blundy was melancholy, tempestuous, fiercely loyal to his friends, gregarious, lonely and surrounded by people who loved him. Now he is gone.
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Into hiding...
Dozens of religious workers, labor activists, academics and political figures went into hiding Friday after the slaughter of six Jesuit priests and arrest of 12 Lutheran missionary workers.
The U.S. ambassador pressured the Salvadoran government to quickly conduct an investigation, and U.S. religious leaders condemned the slayings, blamed on right-wing forces, and called for a cutoff of U.S. aid to the government of President Alfredo Cristiani.
The government, which has received $3.5 billion in U.S. aid this decade, denied responsibility. Fighting slackened Friday between troops and leftist rebels in parts of San Salvador, six days after insurgents launched the biggest offensive in the decade-old civil war. The troops did not appear to be making substantial progress in driving the guerrillas from the capital.