A 24-year-old British journalist shot dead in Baghdad over the weekend was a relative novice who had travelled to Iraq to fulfil an ambition to work as a war reporter.
Richard Wild, from Melrose in the Scottish borders, was killed across the road from Baghdad’s museum. However, it was unclear last night whether he had been targeted because he was a reporter.
Wild had been chatting with US military policemen guarding the museum minutes before his death. He was wearing a white shirt and khaki trousers and was not carrying his video camera.
Yesterday a US soldier was shot and killed in what appeared to be a similar attack at Baghdad university. In both cases a man approached the victim, drew out a pistol, fired it into the base of the skull, and fled into a crowd which made no effort to stop him.
The US soldier was queuing to buy a soft drink when he was gunned down. He was evacuated to a military hospital in a critical condition but later was reported to have died of his injuries.
Wild was the first journalist to die since US forces entered Baghdad in April, sparking a growing wave of guerrilla resistance. A tall man with close-cropped hair, Wild was a former British soldier who still looked the part, according to Michael Burke, an independent British TV producer who knew him.
”He wanted to do war reporting. He didn’t want to sit in the studio,” Burke said.
He had arrived from London less than two weeks ago, one of many freelances who hoped to break into reporting. Using his own £10 000, digital video camera, he joined those filming the aftermath of attacks on Americans and selling material to TV companies. At the time of his death, he had been working on a feature story about looting at the natural history museum.
”I told Richard, ‘This is a nice little story for you’,” said Burke, who identified his body at the hospital mortuary. ”We wanted to let him shoot it on his own.”
Burke said he had warned Wild he needed body armour and that he should not walk around the streets of Baghdad. ”He laughed a bit and said, ‘I always walk around locally’. He stood out in a crowd.”
During the war, Wild worked at ITN’s London studios as a freelance picture researcher, logging satellite news feeds. US military police at the scene found an ITN identification card on the body and notified the station’s bureau in Baghdad.
Harry Smith, an ITN correspondent in Baghdad, said he last saw Wild on Thursday when he visited the TV studios in the Palestine Hotel with footage of grief-stricken Iraqis who had lost a loved one in a clash with the Americans.
”He knew this was a very dangerous place,” Smith said. ”He just had a thirst to know what the real story was and what was in the minds of the Iraqi people.”
Wild grew up near Melrose, Roxburghshire. He attended Sedbergh School, and served a short-term commission as a lieutenant in the King’s Regiment before going on to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read history. He was a keen rugby player and rower.
ITN’s chief executive, Stewart Purvis, said yesterday: ”In the six months Richard worked [here], he was regarded as a dedicated and popular member of the newsroom team.”
Richard’s father, Robin Wild (62) yesterday said the family had attempted to persuade him not to go to Iraq. ”It was something entirely voluntary he was doing and we felt there was no need for him to go. But he had been bent on doing this assignment for months.”
Wild (62) said his son set off 12 days ago. He feared his son might have been mistaken for an American because of his looks.
The dead man’s mother Daphne (62) said: ”We tried to stop him, but he felt he had to go. We spoke once or twice when he was over there on his satellite phone.”
Wild, who was single, had two older sisters, Alison (36) and Rosemary (26).
His death brings to 16 the number of journalists killed in Iraq since the start of the war on March 20. – Guardian Unlimited Â