Loading an image using ActionScript with a DataGrid / ItemRenderer

I didn't find any examples of this on Google on how to do this programmatically.
What I wanted to do was display a trash icon / image indicating whether an email message was deleted or not.

For your DataGridColumn:

<mx:DataGridColumn headerText="" dataField="icon" width="11" 
itemRenderer="com.sandman.view.IconRenderer" />

Now your renderer:

package com.sandman.view
{
 import mx.containers.HBox;
 import mx.controls.Image;
 
 public class IconRenderer extends HBox
 {
     private var imageReference:Image = null;
        override public function set data(value:Object):void {

         if (value.deleted && imageReference==null) {
      var img:Image = new Image();
      img.source = 'assets/icons/trash.gif';
      img.height = 10;
      img.width = 10;
      imageReference = img;
      addChild(img);
         } else if (imageReference is Image) {
          imageReference.visible = value.deleted;
         }
            
            super.invalidateDisplayList();
            
        }
 
 }
}

The above is a more flexible equivalent to the <mx:Component /> tag.