A former reality TV star has lifted the lid on his horror experience in jail, describing the “blood on the walls” and how it forced him to “grow up pretty quick”.
Clint Kimmins, 38, starred on Ten’s hit series Bondi Rescue for four years before being sacked last year over controversial vaccine mandates.
In 2004, he’d been on the cusp of a promising career in professional surfing when, at the age of 22, he ended up behind bars for glassing a man during a night out.
Kimmins had been at a 21st birthday party when he came embroiled in a brawl and grabbed a glass bottle to defend himself, which resulted in him stabbing a man in the neck.
He was found guilty of unlawful wounding and sentenced to 18 months in a maximum security jail with a non-parole period of six months.
Opening up about the ordeal on the Good Humans podcast, Kimmins described his terrifying first week in jail.
“I remember sitting (in a holding cell beneath the courtroom) in my suit and it was dark and cold,” he said.
“Then it was time to get naked and put my clothes in a bag and get into my prison browns … but the clothes stunk and they had holes in them – the shirt was small, the pants were big.”
Kimmins went on to explain that his two-month stint in the holding cell was the worst part of his incarceration.
“There was blood on the walls and paint scratched off by fingernails,” he said.
“People were scratching the paint off the wall, rolling it with cardboard toilet rolls and smoking it, and the smell …”
Kimmins admitted that he would wake up crying and desperately “wanted to step outside” his body” and “get on with it”.
He also described being transported from the holding cell to a maximum-security prison while shackled inside a small box, claiming it was “like in the movies”.
During his time being evaluated in the medical facility, Kimmins recalled, another patient approached him and told him, “You’re young, you’re cute”.
“I cracked jokes at him and played along, but it makes you grow up pretty quick,” Kimmins revealed.
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“Eventually I was put in a cell with this young guy who was addicted to drugs, and he was laying down and smoking, but he gave me some Tim Tams and I spoke to him quietly. I remember how quiet it was.”
Kimmins moved back to the Gold Coast last year after losing his job at Bondi, and has previously hit out at the local Waverley council for how brutally it handled his sacking.
The lifeguard was one of a handful of regulars to be let go after neglecting to comply with vaccine mandates. He claimed those who failed to show proof of vaccination were dismissed from their role via a blunt email from the council.
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