An episode of Clean Sweep took a tragic turn this week when “organizer” Peter Walsh was shot in the foot during filming. On location in Detroit Michigan at the home of Sid and Clair Beaumont, the crew had just finished the 30 minute review of home items. This is the part of the show where they take all of the clutter out of the home and place it on a tarp in the backyard. Homeowners are asked to separate the items into “Keep”, “Sell”, and “Trash” piles. “The Beaumonts had been argumentative during the entire process” said host Tava Smiley who played “Chloe Morgan” on the daytime soap opera General Hospital. She further stated “It’s not unusual for people to have strong emotional attachments to their home items, but you could tell right from the start that something was just not working out for these two.” After the 30 minute sorting process, Peter Walsh, who has been an organizational consultant for the last 12 years, arrived to work with the Beaumonts to further fine tune their keep pile.
“After 30 minutes, they had only put one cardboard shoebox of old cassette tapes into the trash pile and a single kitchen towel into the sell pile.” remarked Walsh, “the amount of stuff they were trying to keep was just incredible.” Walsh is used to this kind of behavior. He considers himself a little bit of a therapist who aids people in coming to terms with their connection to clutter. “I’ve worked with a lot of different people in my consulting years. I’ve seen people cry, scream, jump up and down, and one year a guy curled up into the fetal position on the kitchen floor, but I’ve never seen tempers so out of control as the Beamonts. We had just started and I asked Mr. Beaumont about an old toy truck that had two of the wheels missing and the hood was completely sheered off. He said that he really wanted it. Mrs. Beaumont immediately started in with comments about “See, I told you they would want you to get rid of this” and then they started yelling at each other. I’ve seen this before, but the next thing I knew, Mr. Beaumont pushed me and I fell over an old table and then he pulled out an olive drab Glock 22 and fired two shots right at my foot!” Tava Smiley heard the shots from the front yard and ran around back to see what had happened. “At first, I thought they must have found some old fireworks and were just playing around, but when I made it around back I saw Mrs. Beaumont holding her head and screaming “I don’t believe you just shot him!” and Peter was on the ground holding his foot. Mr. Beaumont was screaming something about how life was unfair and toy trucks shouldn’t be just thrown out.”
Carpenter Eric Stromer was the next on the scene and he wrestled Mr. Beaumont to the ground and took the gun from him. “I’ve been in construction for quite some time, so Mr. Beamont was no match for me” said Stromer. Mr. Walsh was taken to the emergency room where he was released and is expected to make a full recovery.
Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont could not be reached for comment, however the producers of Clean Sweep said they do not expect to press charges “I think you can expect this type of behavior from time to time. Clutter is just an emotionally charged subject with people. I’m surprised we don’t get shot at more often!”
1 Comment
September 2, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Hey! You posted that years ago…wasn’t that you? Funny.