A Signal Mountain firefighter has resigned after a Signal Mountain police officer looked through a window and saw him dressed as a woman performing a sex act on a man he had let inside Signal Mountain Fire Station 2.
According to an Internal Affairs report on the Oct. 6 incident, the officer said he was driving by when he noticed a white male in front of the station and what looked to be a female in the lobby. He said by the time he had turned around and returned, "the male and female party" were inside the station.
A black Dodge pickup truck with an Alabama plate was outside the fire station on Shackleford Ridge Road.
The police officer looked through a window of the training room and saw a man sitting in a chair and a female performing oral sex on him.
He said, while wearing his bodycam, he attempted to enter the building undetected to detain the two individuals. When he entered the training room the man was running for an exit while zipping up his pants. The officer yelled at the man to stop, but he continued out the door. The officer said he had to take him down with a leg sweep.
Meanwhile, the police officer got on his radio and called for backup. He also asked that other Signal Mountain fire personnel at the scene be alerted of the situation.
Another Signal Mountain police officer then arrived along with two sheriff deputies.
The man he had taken down advised that the female was actually a man dressed up like a woman. He said the man was hiding in the men's bathroom in the training center. He said the man was a firefighter.
After securing the 45-year-old Huntsville, Ala., man in a patrol car, officers then went looking for the firefighter involved. No one was found in the training room men's bathroom.
The officer said the firefighter who turned out to be the one dressed like a woman began helping to search for the person.
The officer said he believed the person involved would have had to have been a firefighter or police officer who had codes for entering the building.
He said he began to suspect one of the firefighters at the scene "due to his odd behavior in how he was looking through the areas and items such as a pillow on the floor of the training room in front of the chair where the sexual act was being performed had been moved to the counter and that a bottle of 'lube' had disappeared from the counter top in the same area."
The officer said the firefighter he suspected was the only firefighter in that area when he was not present there.
He said he also noticed that the firefighter suspect had lip gloss on his lower lip.
All three firefighters at the station were taken to the day area, and the officer told them that one of them was the suspect.
Meanwhile, the Alabama man was telling officers that the other person was an on duty firefighter at that station that let him in and performed a sex act on him while dressed as a woman and wearing makeup.
The suspect firefighter then asked to go outside, and he admitted to the officer that he was the one who let in the Alabama man, though he attempted to deny any sex act.
The suspect firefighter was told by fire personnel to collect his belongings and leave the station. He was not to come back until further notified.
He afterward resigned.
The Huntsville man showed officers text messages between him and the firefighter showing that the firefighter had been sending him texts for a week trying to get him to come to the station for sex acts.
A black bag containing female clothes and a wig was found in the men's restroom.
The officer said no charge was brought against the Huntsville man. He said he could not be charged with trespass because he had been let in the building.