Sometimes the cameramen get stabbed at unruly town halls or get arrested for fights with their girlfriends. And at other times, much more sordid affairs go down.
When he was lead anchor in , Sanchez was involved in a drunk driving accident that left a pedestrian paralyzed. He was charged with a DUI for a blood alcohol level of 0. Still, the incident was hard for Sanchez to shake, especially when the pedestrian died five years later in an assisted living facility. Bill Kamal was chief meteorologist at WSVN-Channel 7 in Fort Lauderdale for 10 years before he was busted for attempting to solicit sex from a minor in Instead, it was an undercover detective and Kamal was arrested and fired from the station within 24 hours.
Local Florida stations seem to have a high bar for dismissal: Before the web sex sting, Kamal had been arrested twice for drunk driving, but managed to keep his job at Channel 7. Kamal served a four-year prison sentence before moving to a halfway house in Philadelphia. He reportedly now works in Boston in the hospitality industry.
He talks candidly about whether he's attracted to children and whether he's done something like this before. We'll get to all of that over the next few days, but we begin with Kamal and his life behind bars.
Kamal: "I miss the little things that you couldn't possibly even imagine, like when I saw two Canadian geese in the recreation yard. And I'm thinking they don't know they're in prison -- they flew away -- and I can't fly away. The federal prison Kamal calls home is 1, miles from South Florida and a world away from the life he used to know. It's in the Massachusetts countryside, ironically only 22 miles from the place where he was born. South Florida came to know Kamal as a trusted meteorologist; his expensive suits, his jet-black hair -- a man who delivered the forecast with confidence.
Today, the hair that had been darkened with dye is now gray like the walls of his prison. His GQ look replaced with a prison jump suit. Kamal: "Some days are easier than others. I hope I don't get used to this lifestyle where I settle in because some days you just can't believe I'm here. It's just so surreal. It's like a dream. A bad dream says Kamal, one that began last October when he was arrested outside a Fort Pierce convenience store, caught in an Internet sex sting, his life spun out of control.
He wound up in isolation in the downtown Miami federal detention center. Kamal: "It was an unbelievable hell. I would be on my knees and talk about soul searching. I probably got closer to God in four to five months than most people do in a lifetime.
You have nothing but God, letters, letters that you write, mail that comes in. You have only to look forward when officers come by, opens big door, it's called chuck door, they open it up to feed you on a tray then they close it again. Very seldom ask how you are doing. When you go to recreation, it was just you. Move to a different room, that was just you.
But it had fresh air rather than air conditioning -- no sunlight, never any sunlight. And sometimes, in by-6 cell for three weeks at a time, breathing the same air. My books, my letters, my mail and God -- not necessarily in that order, and just looking forward to some human life.
Bring my meals, that's what I looked forward to. And God got me by. I got by with God. I was arrested in October and never saw the light of day again. I was put on suicide watch -- not even knowing I was on suicide watch. You people reported that I was on suicide watch. My family and friends think I'm going to commit suicide. I didn't even know where the hell I was.
That isolation ended when Kamal pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to five years and was moved from Miami to the federal medical center in Deven, Mass. Kamal: "We drove down I past my godmother's house -- two miles. It went past where I was born by a mile and a half. I thought about my parents. I'm thinking, 'Just take this exit. Don't take the next exit and I can be home. Don't take the next exit.
I cry pretty easy. He said he pleaded guilty only because he wanted to avoid life in jail, that a case of food poisoning had left him confused, and that he never wanted to have I support. Support the independent voice of Miami and help keep the future of New Times free.
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