DECEMBER 27, 1989 — MAY 30, 2022
32 YEARS, JOURNALIST
On May 30, Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff suffered a fatal wound to the neck. Shrapnel pierced the armored vehicle he and his colleagues travelled in. His co-workers survived. He did not. Frédéric died in the line of his journalistic duty.
That was his second trip to Ukraine since the full-on Russian invasion on February 24. He showed the reality of war. He was in the midst of reporting about the evacuation of the civilians near the battle-hit Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk region.
The journalist depicted the lives of the people forced to flee under shelling. On the day, the vehicle Frédéric was in was supposed to pick up ten people from the region. Alas, the occupiers sabotaged the evacuation. In big letters, «Humanitarian aid» ran across the bloodied truck. Frédéric’s body was taken to Bakhmut. It was later transported to Dnipro for autopsy. The Russians, to justify their actions, in one of their media outbursts stated that the reporter was a foreign hired gun on his way to deliver weapons to Ukraine.
Frédéric was 32 years of age. He graduated from Institut de Journalisme Bordeaux Aquitaine. He had been working for a French commercial channel BFM TV as a freelance cameraman for six years.
On Thursday, June 9, around 3 o’clock in the morning, the plane carrying the body of the deceased landed in Paris — Le Bourget airport. Family members, friends and Minister of Culture of France Rima Abdul Malak paid tribute to the fallen journalist.
Frederic was born on December 27, 1989. He was not a hot-tempered person. He was mindful of every moment of his work. He was reserved, enthusiastic, caring and courageous. According to his friends, to give a voice to the voiceless, the out-of-sight, was among the many virtues Frédéric possessed.
At the call of «Reporters without borders», a public gathering took place in Paris on June 10. Several hundred people showed up. Silviana Imhoff, the mother, pointing at her son’s picture with a black ribbon across, said «Look, Mr. Putin, this was a wonderful person, and you killed him».
