Richard Wild

From the news reports:

Richard Wild was fatally shot Saturday as he stood in a crowd in the midday sun, apparently on his way to research a story on Iraq's vandalized Natural History Museum, said Michael Burke, an independent British TV producer in Baghdad who identified Wild's body at a hospital morgue Saturday. ...

"He wanted to do war reporting. He didn't want to sit in the studio," said a distraught Burke, 45, discussing his friend's death in a Baghdad hotel lobby. "He was a very nice kid." ...

Wild was one of many freelancers who came to Iraq on the chance of breaking into the competitive reporting field, scrambling to shoot video of the aftermath of attacks on Americans here and sell it to myriad television media companies, Burke said.

AP 06 Jul 2003

He was also a talented sportsman, tall, handsome and effortlessly popular with a huge circle of friends.

An early flirtation with investment banking and a short spell at Sotheby's left him unfulfilled. He decided he wanted to be a journalist, badgering news organisations and writing articles. He spent six months at ITN working as a logger - monitoring hours of TV footage from the Gulf war - and made himself useful.

Last spring, he began making plans to go to Iraq. His parents insist he was not a gung-ho war junkie, but was more interested in covering the aftermath of the war. Richard spent a small fortune on kit - video camera, laptop, satellite phone - and hitched a lift with the BBC from Amman to Baghdad.

Scotsman 17 Jul 2004