> >>>Curiosity may not have killed the cat, but it has done in an
> >>>ambitious television news reporter. Bob Sanders, a five-year
> >>>veteran correspondent at station KLPS-TV, was killed last weekend
> >>>by a flying camera while trying to report from the eye of
> >>>Hurricane Georges.

> >>>Sanders was originally scheduled to do a "stand-up" from the
> >>>hurricane for the station's evening news program, but was pulled
> >>>from the story when higher-ups decided the risks were too great.
> >>>Antonio Davi, the cameraman who had been assigned to the story,
> >>>recalls that Sanders "tried to convince me to go anyway, said it
> >>>was a once in a lifetime career opportunity. I told him he was
> >>>nuts."

> >>>Even without a cameraman, Sanders apparently decided to set off
> >>>into the hurricane himself. Taking a remote-control camera and
> >>>tripod from a station control room, he drove south into the storm,
> >>>setting up to tape himself reporting from near the wind-torn
> >>>shoreline.

> >>>Videotape later recovered by local police shows Sanders reporting
> >>>from a variety of locales and angles, often chasing after the
> >>>camera as it was blown over by 100-mile-per-hour-plus wind gusts.
> >>>The reporter later describes how he was able to prop up the camera
> >>>against a pile of storm debris, "held up by the very force of the
> >>>hurricane itself."

> >>>Shortly thereafter, however, the eye of the storm apparently
> >>>passed over Sanders, and the wind changed direction as the
> >>>"eyewall," the strongest part of the hurricane, passed through.
> >>>The camera and tripod, lashed to several hundred pounds of broken
> >>>branches and timber, were hurled toward Sanders, killing him
> >>>instantly.

> >>>"It must have been a total surprise to him," said sheriff Joseph
> >>>McCatty.  "He had braced himself against a fence to protect
> >>>against the wind, then it shifted on him. He never stood a
> >>>chance."

> >>>Station manager Ed Brace remembered Sanders as an enthusiastic
> >>>reporter with a tenacious eye for the dramatic. "He certainly did
> >>>cover an amazing story," said Brace, "but I don't think his own
> >>>death was what he had in mind."