By Drew Harwell, Times Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2010
WESLEY CHAPEL — Jonathan Brueckner had an efficient way of cleaning tables.
As he moved about the Saddlebrook Resort, tending to the finer details of Saturday night's banquet, authorities said he picked up half-full drinks — and finished them himself.
But Brueckner's attention to waste had one problem: The work was getting him drunk. By the end of the night, after an outburst in which he wielded a corkscrew as a weapon and growled like a wild animal, deputies wrote that his devotion to efficiency had landed him in jail.
Brueckner, 36, an employee with a temporary agency called in to work the banquet, said he didn't understand why the deputies were charging him with disorderly intoxication.
The guests "were just leaving their beer on the table and walking away," deputies recalled him saying. "My crime is taking a few beers?"
The crime, deputies said, was what happened next. Jody Jackfert, Brueckner's co-worker, said she was refusing to talk with him when he became angry and grabbed the corkscrew.
He made a fist, slid the blade between his fingers and began growling and shaking violently, according to a Pasco County Sheriff's Office report. Jackfert told her manager about the threat, worried he might pounce on one of the resort's guests.
Saddlebrook security guards, finding a few cans of beer in his pocket, confined Brueckner to an office about 11 p.m. He cursed and clenched his teeth, they said. When deputies arrived, he reeked of alcohol and was wobbling.
Deputies took him to the Land O'Lakes jail Saturday night. He was released on $100 bail Sunday morning. Jackfert, 56, declined to press assault charges.
Brueckner admitted to deputies he had a problem with alcohol, adding that this kind of outburst was nothing new. He pleaded no contest in 2007 to disorderly conduct while working at the Seminole Hard Rock casino in Tampa. Still, he defended his work. "Hey, all those people were drinking," deputies recalled him saying. "Why can't I?"
Contact Drew Harwell at dharwell@sptimes.com or (727) 869-6244.