At the accident scene that cost him his job, former Deputy Dominic Fornal allegedly poured a bottle of liquor into a woman's purse and then dumped the remainder of the bottle onto the floorboards of her van.

Minutes later, Fornal allegedly described one of his coworkers, Deputy James Kathman, as a "dumb ass" to a state trooper.

Confronted with these and other allegations contained in an internal affairs investigation, Fornal opted to resign Wednesday from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office rather than answer to the charges.

"I hereby resign effective immediately for personal reasons," he wrote in his one-sentence resignation letter to Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight.

The internal affairs report, only partially completed since Fornal was never interviewed about some of the allegations, is now being scrutinized by defense attorneys who are scrambling to use it to discredit Fornal if the State Attorney's Office calls him as a civilian witness.