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A US citizen was killed in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv during what his sister said Thursday was an attack on civilians waiting in a bread line.
James Whitney Hill, 68, was identified by sister Cheryl Hill Gordon in a post on Facebook.
“My brother Jimmy Hill was killed yesterday in Chernihiv, Ukraine,” Gordon wrote.
“He was waiting in a bread line with several other people when they were gunned down by Russian military [snipers]. His body was found in the street by the local police.”
Earlier Thursday, the US Embassy in Kyiv said Russian forces fatally shot 10 people in the attack, which Russia denied as a hoax.
In a brief phone interview, Gordon said another brother was notified of Hill’s slaying by the State Department.
Hill had been living in Ukraine and working as a teacher for the past 25 years, she said.
He became romantically involved with a former student, Irina, who’s in her 40s and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about eight years ago, Gordon said.
The couple was in Chernihiv because “after two years of searching,” Hill found a hospital there with a doctor who “knew much more about MS than other doctors in the area,” she said.
“He finally got her into the hospital in January,” his sister said. “Once the war broke out, he made the decision to stay.”
Hill “was actually trying to get her out of there, but Irina was in poor condition,” she said.
“She would have needed an ambulance to get her out and there was no way to get her out,” Gordon said.
“The hospital was running out of food, so he went out to get food and that’s how he was killed.”
Hill had to return to the US periodically to satisfy Ukrainian visa requirements and he owned property in Idaho near Yellowstone National Park that his brother rented out as an Airbnb when Hill wasn’t there, Gordon said.
On Tuesday, a friend, Karin Moseley, told Idaho TV station Local News 8 that Hill had been “thrust into literally the middle of hell” after traveling to Ukraine in December.
