Death
On June 20, 1979, Stewart was traveling in a press van in the eastern slums of the capital city of Managua with his camera and sound crew when they were stopped at a roadblock run by the Nicaraguan Guardia (lit. Guardia Nacional, or National Guard), the main force of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The van was clearly marked as a press vehicle as a precaution, which had become standard practice as the insurgency and revolution increased in intensity. On the previous day the government newspaper Novedades had run an editorial describing foreign journalists as "part of the vast network of communist propaganda".
Stewart and his 26-year-old Nicaraguan interpreter, Juan Francisco Espinosa, exited the vehicle and approached the barricade. Stewart presented official press credentials issued by the office of the Nicaraguan president. When they were a few meters away from the soldiers cameraman Jack Clark spontaneously began filming from inside the van. A guardsman ordered the men to separate, and Stewart was ordered first to kneel and then to lie face down on the ground. A soldier approached Stewart, kicked him once in the ribs, then stepped back and shot him behind his right ear, killing him instantly. Juan Espinosa had been shot to death off-camera by a different soldier, apparently before Stewart was killed, after he approached the guards to ask their permission for an interview. The driver of the ABC van, Pablo Tiffer Lopez, would later testify that a soldier remarked of Stewart, "I'm sure he's no journalist. He's a dog." He also testified that when the soldiers realized they had killed an American journalist they commanded the crew to report that a Sandinista sniper was responsible.
Stewart was 37 years old. He was survived by his wife, Myrna, and his parents. His body was retrieved by his crew and flown on an Air Force C-130 from Nicaragua to Panama, then transferred to an airplane sent by ABC and returned to the United States. Stewart was buried in Ashland, Kentucky.
Read more about this topic: Bill Stewart (television Journalist)
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