LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — More people continue to reflect and remember who filmmaker Brent Renaud was as a person and a journalist.
Raymond McCaffrey is the director for the center of ethics and journalism at the University of Arkansas.
"He points his camera, you know, at real people facing real issues and problems," McCaffrey said.
He said that Renaud's commitment to journalism and filmmaking is something he remembers fondly.
"All of his work, his documentaries, and his podcasts are extremely personal," McCaffrey told us.
He brought Renaud in to serve as visiting professor at the university in 2019.
"When I bring visiting professors in what I like to do most, and I do this almost all the time if I can, is to just put people, you know, talented journalists, reporters, together with students and have them see their work," McCaffrey added.
Renaud was working on a story in Ukraine about the refugees leaving Ukraine.
On Sunday, he was shot and killed by Russian forces outside of Ukraine's capitol city of Kyiv.
The veteran journalist was known for his coverage on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the drug war in Mexico.
His friend Juan Arredondo was also shot and witnessed it all.
"Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint and they started shooting at us," Arredondo described while hospital staff looked at his wound.
Like many journalists, Renaud was on the frontline, trying to tell the stories of people living through the crisis.
Rob Mortiz and David Keith are journalism professors at the University of Central Arkansas.
Both have noticed an increase in foreign correspondents losing their lives in the field.
"The journalist is there to see more of the story," Keith said.
"Anytime you go to an area where there's, you know, people, but weapons being fired, I think it's always been dangerous," Moritz said.
That is a scary reality for storytellers getting accounts from so many sources about the war in Ukraine.
"It wouldn't surprise me if the Russians are just trying to keep journalists from telling their stories," Moritz said.
It's a threat that many journalists face daily, but one that McCaffrey said Renaud was willing to handle.
"He was going to go about it with the same sense of purpose and humility," McCaffrey said.
Fox News journalist Benjamin Hall was also wounded on Monday covering the crisis in Ukraine.