Anchorage Daily News

A young Alaskan war correspondent shot by Georgian separatists on Sunday has been transported to a hospital in Moscow, where he is in an intensive care unit, his family said this morning.

Winston Featherly-Bean, 22, is weak and has received a blood transfusion, his mother, Christine Bean, said. He was medevacked from a hospital in the southern Russia republic of North Ossetia around 5 a.m. Alaska time, according to Winston's brother, Peter Featherly-Bean. Winston was reportedly among the most seriously ill of those injured in the fighting.

"We've learned that Winston was suddenly operated on again today," Peter wrote in an e-mail to family and friends early this morning. "He is reportedly weak. We fear infection but hold on to better thoughts."

Winston told his mother in a phone call yesterday that he had no feeling in his lower leg. He apparently has a shattered ankle and foot, she said.

Winston was interviewed early this morning in Moscow at General Hospital No. 86 by a Fox News journalist, who told the family that he was alert but in pain, Peter Featherly-Bean said. The interview is supposed to air on Fox News today.

Bean is making travel arrangements to join her son as soon as possible. The family hopes he will soon be well enough to be transferred to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, where he can have reconstructive surgery on his foot.

There was little word on Temuri Kiguradze, a Georgian journalist who worked with Winston at The Messenger, a small English-language newspaper in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Kiguradze was shot in the arm in the incident in which Winston was wounded.

"The last we heard he was at a police headquarters, still in Vladikavkaz," Peter Featherly-Bean said.

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