Lieutenant resigns after FL firehouse sex video surfaces
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Lt. Stephen Coward’s 19 year run with the Clearwater Fire Department ended abruptly last month with his resignation after a graphic cell phone video and sex talk emails surfaced indicating he had been having intimate encounters with women other than his wife inside Clearwater Fire Station 51.
“We began an investigation immediately and tried to figure out what happened,” said City Spokesman Rob Shaw.
The video shows Coward engaged in intercourse with a woman inside the bathroom of his dormitory room at the firehouse. He’s smiling and holding up a cell phone that is recording that sex act in a mirror.
That video, along with 40 salacious emails involving Coward and another woman were on a flash drive sent to a Clearwater fire chief on August 6th.
“The fire department received a package and within that package contained a letter and also a disk that encouraged us to check out some activities alleged to have gone on at one of our fire stations,” Clearwater city spokesman Rob Shaw to ABC Action News.
Officials said Coward admitted to the inappropriate actions before resigning.
Coward also admitted to having sex with a woman inside a dive truck as well as in a weight room.
A second anonymous person came forward to officials saying Coward had sexual relations with as many as eight different women while on the job, a list that includes an elementary school teacher, a former girlfriend of a colleague and former girlfriends of Coward’s.
According to the internal investigation, Coward told city leaders that no one from the fire department knew of his transgressions.
