A second American citizen died in a Russian attack, in Chernihiv, a northern Ukrainian city, where he was taking care of his partner, according to NPR.
Cheryl Hill Gordon, who reported the death on Thursday, said that her brother, James Hill, an Idaho native, was waiting in a bread line when 10 people were shot.
- “My brother Jimmy Hill was killed yesterday in Chernihiv, Ukraine. He was waiting in a bread line with several other people when they were gunned down” by Russian military forces, Gordon said, per the report. “His body was found in the street by the local police.”
Katya Hill, his sister and an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said that her brother was living in Ukraine for his partner, Irina, who was undergoing treatment for multiple sclerosis.
- “When I was warning him about the dangers, he did not feel that the world would let this happen because my parents raised us to see the good in people’s hearts and that’s how he lived,” Hill said about her brother.
- In another interview, she said that the last time she talked to her sibling, she heard bombs in the background.
- “He was going out on a daily basis searching for food. The hospital lost electricity. The hospital lost gas. There was no heat,” she said, per CBS News. “My brother was a peacemaker, and he was a giver, and he just felt everybody in the world should love each other.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed the death of another American on Thursday. He is the second American to die after journalist Brent Renaud, a filmmaker, was shot and killed on March 13 in a town outside Kyiv.
Before his death, Hill posted online about his time in Chernihiv as Russia invaded Ukraine.
- “We are staying on 3rd floor in Hospital. Most patients in basement bomb shelter. But cold down there and no internet,” he posted on Feb. 26, two days after Russia launched its invasion, per Business Insider.
- “Nobody in Chernihiv is safe. Indiscriminate bombing. ... Ukrainian forces hold city but are surrounded. It’s a siege here. Nobody in. Nobody out,” he posted later on.