SHRS professor’s brother killed in Ukraine

Jim Hill, the brother of School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences associate professor Katya Hill, was killed in Chernihiv, Ukraine, while waiting in line for bread, his family wrote in a Facebook post on March 17.

The city, about 80 miles from Kyiv, has been suffering "heavy artillery" attacks from Russian forces, according to Newsweek.

The U.S. embassy in Kyiv said that Russian forces “shot and killed 10 people standing in line for bread in Chernihiv.”

According to a Facebook post from another sister, Cheryl Hill Gordon, her brother stayed in Ukraine with a friend who was “severely ill,” and had been stranded in a hospital with her when the war began on Feb. 24.

Jim Hill had been living in Ukraine on and off and working as a teacher for the past 20 years, Katya Hill told Minnesota Public Radio. The Hill family is originally from Minnesota.

In her March 12 post, Gordon said that Katya Hill had been in touch with her brother and he “has asked that I organize friends to contact their U.S. senators, Congress person and the White House to negotiate a corridor for people to leave Chernihiv for humanitarian purposes.”

At that time, Katya Hill related from her brother that: “After 14 days of bombing, the city is without electricity and gas, internet outages preventing communication, and food and water shortages. Patients in critical and severe conditions in the hospital have been without heat in very cold weather. People standing in lines for food have been killed by missiles.”