Ex-news anchor Frank Somerville hit a low point this week as he was arrested twice within twelve hours in Berkeley, California.
Troubles began to mount for Somerville after he was taken off the air by KTVU for slurring his speech during a late May 2021 live news broadcast.
Following a nine-week rehab, Somerville returned to the anchor seat but was let go a short time after a reported dispute regarding the Gabby Petito case coverage.
Several months later, Somerville was captured on video driving under the influence and ramming his vehicle into an Audi stopped at a light in Oakland, California.
“I got trashed,” Somerville said at the time. “I mean, there’s no other way to say it. I got trashed in my apartment and wanted to go to Taco Bell, which is two and a half blocks away from where I live. I made the idiotic decision to drive. I had absolutely no business at all to drive — at all.”
On Tuesday, officers arrested Somerville, 65, at 6:30 p.m. and charged the former anchor with making criminal threats, battery, public intoxication and probation violation, according to the Berkeley Scanner.
Family members called police after Frank reportedly assaulted his younger brother during a dispute regarding “ongoing family issues” concerning their 91-year-old father, whom Frank allegedly threatened.
According to the New York Post, the longtime KTVU anchor showed up “drunk and angry at his father’s home” and refused to leave. An altercation with his brother Mark followed.
Police processed Frank’s arrest at the Berkeley Jail and released him on $32,500 bond at approximately 2:30 a.m.
A subsequent police report notes that Frank retrieved his vehicle from his father’s home without incident but returned a short time later looking for his cell phone.
Frank allegedly repeatedly rang the doorbell after 4 a.m., prompting another call to the police at 4:20 a.m.
Responding officers found Frank in his car, displaying “objective signs and symptoms of public intoxication and was witnessed driving under the influence of alcohol.”
Officers arrested the ex-newsman “on suspicion of DUI and probation violation” and transported him to the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, where he was processed and released on $15,000 bail.
In an email statement to the Berkeley Scanner the next day, Frank asserted he “wasn’t drunk.”
Somerville has stated he hopes to return to the news desk. “I mean, that’s what I love,” he said. “I love anchoring.”
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