THE DAILY BEAST
In his first television interview since being badly injured near Kyiv nearly one year ago while covering the Russian war against Ukraine, Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall recalled his jarring experience Thursday to Sean Hannity.
Hall, who lost both feet, the use of his left eye, and required surgery on his left hand, had been traveling by car with Fox News photographer Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kurshynova, both of whom were killed after their vehicle was struck.
“We slowed down at an abandoned checkpoint and out of nowhere, the first missile came,” Hall recounted. “[It] lands about 30 feet in front of us. Immediately, Pierre shouts, ‘Reverse the car, reverse the car!’ There were two Ukrainians driving as well – five of us in the car. The car got stuck. We couldn’t go back.”
After Zakrzewski urged everyone to get out of the car, another missile hit.
“And that one, I went black,” Hall recalled. “And I was in a dark place. I couldn’t feel or see. I’d taken some shrapnel in the eye and a matchbox-sized shrapnel in my neck, and I was out. I was out dead.”
Hall then said he had a vision of his daughter, who also told him to leave the car.
“[It was as] real as if she was in front of me. Out of nowhere, she came to me,” he said. “And I came to, and I opened up my eyes and my instinct took me towards the car door, and I scrambled and I pulled myself out. And I got out of the car, and the third bomb hit the car itself right after that.”
Zakrzewski, still alive, warned him about Russian drones and that he should keep still, Hall said, and when he tried to get the attention of a nearby car, Zakrzewski said it might belong to Russians.
“And I said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m so badly injured. I’ve got to go,’” Hall remembered.
Hall’s book, Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make It Home, goes on sale March 14. His full interview with Hannity is set to air Friday.
