[6] 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, President Anastasio Somoza Debayle's main force.

[7] On the previous day, the government newspaper Novedades had run an editorial describing foreign journalists as "part of the vast network of communist propaganda".

[5][9][11] Espinoza was 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.

[13] His body was retrieved by his crew and flown on a U.S. Air Force C-130 from Nicaragua to Panama, then transferred to an airplane sent by ABC and returned to the United States.

[18] The ultimate fates of the Guardia soldiers responsible for the killings of Stewart and Espinoza are not known, due to the chaotic demise of the Somoza regime.

[21] A fictional version of Stewart's murder was told in the 1983 film Under Fire, starring Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte, and Joanna Cassidy.

[22] Hackman's Alex Grazier and Nolte's Russell Price are amalgamations of Bill Stewart's life and career as a journalist and war correspondent.

As in Stewart's case, the images are shown to television audiences around the world, and the public outcry signals the end for the embattled Somoza dictatorship.

The park, established at the site in Barrio Riguero where he was killed, featured a cement monument and a plaque with the inscription "In memory of Bill Stewart.