Slain Deputy’s Accomplice May Be Officer

The accomplice of an off-duty San Diego County sheriff’s deputy who was killed by a fellow officer while robbing an Encinitas home was part of a team of deputies that recently searched the residence for drugs, the house’s owner claimed Thursday.

Donald Van Ort, 32, of Encinitas was tied up and beaten by Deputy Michael Stanewich in a robbery attempt Wednesday that ended in the undercover narcotics officer being fatally shot by a colleague and close friend. Van Ort said that Stanewich’s accomplice, who fled when Stanewich forced his way into the home at gunpoint, also had accompanied Stanewich to the house during a May 30 drug search.

“I recognized him with Stanewich,” a visibly shaken Van Ort said at news conference Thursday outside his house. “Those two matched together. They’d been here before.”

Authorities said late Thursday that they have investigated that possibility but stressed that none of the officers present during the earlier drug search, which turned up no illegal narcotics, is a suspect in Wednesday’s attempted robbery. Sheriff Jim Roache said, however, that investigators have not ruled out the possibility that a second law-enforcement officer may have been involved.

During the May drug search, Stanewich noticed a large amount of cash, estimated at more than $100,000, in Van Ort’s house, officials said. Authorities have speculated that Stanewich may have intended to steal that money when he returned Wednesday to the house. Van Ort, without specifying the amount, claims that the money came from his grandmother’s sale of a family farm in Indiana.

Sheriff’s detectives also plan to investigate whether the 36-year-old Stanewich may have been involved in other robberies or criminal activities with circumstances similar to those surrounding Wednesday’s fatal incident. Stanewich, a 9-year Sheriff’s Department veteran, recently was disciplined for conducting an unauthorized stakeout of a business, Roache said.

At Thursday’s news conference, Van Ort, accompanied by lawyer August Anderson and his 82-year-old grandmother, who lives with him, provided a dramatic account of how the botched robbery attempt unfolded.

While he was taking a shower Wednesday morning, Van Ort said, he heard the doorbell ring at his single-story, ranch-style house in the 200 block of Cole Ranch Road in the Encinitas neighborhood of Olivenhain. When he reached the door, he recognized Stanewich and the second man from the earlier visit, and opened the door.

The two men appeared startled, perhaps because it had taken him several minutes to respond to the doorbell, Van Ort said. Others have speculated that perhaps they expected not to find anyone at home. Stanewich, however, quickly pulled a stocking mask over his face and shoved Van Ort inside the house, while the second man apparently panicked and ran away.

“It’s a robbery, Grandma!” Van Ort shouted. While Stanewich handcuffed Van Ort and bound and gagged his grandmother, Van Ort’s girlfriend climbed unnoticed out a back bedroom window, scaled a 6-foot fence and called authorities from a neighbor’s house.

“He told me to stay put,” Helen Van Ort recalled. “He said, ‘You’re gonna shut up, or I’m gonna blow your brains out.’ ”

During the assault, Van Ort asked Stanewich if he was working with an ex-girlfriend whom he had pleaded guilty to assaulting last June. According to Van Ort, Stanewich replied: “Yeah, (she) sent me here to burn your house down. She wants the rings out of the safe. Give me the combination, or I’ll douse you with lighter fluid.”

Stanewich apparently dropped a pack of matches and looked for them on the floor. Van Ort’s grandmother, however, noticed the matches and covered them up.

“She saved my life,” he said.

Responding to the girlfriend’s call, Deputy Gary Steadman and another deputy arrived at Van Ort’s home about 10:40 a.m. Wednesday. When Steadman entered the home, he saw the masked Stanewich beating and threatening to kill Van Ort, who was handcuffed, hogtied and had a pillowcase soaked with lighter fluid over his head.

According to officials, Steadman identified himself as a deputy and ordered Stanewich, whom he did not recognize because of the mask, to freeze. However, Stanewich, who had a pistol in his waistband, flailed his arms near a knife sitting on the sink and moved toward Steadman. When Stanewich ignored a second order to stop, Steadman fired three rounds, striking Stanewich twice in the upper body.

Van Ort, who was beaten on his head and body, had passed out from the lighter fluid and did not hear Steadman’s shots, he said. His grandmother, however, heard three shots as Steadman entered the kitchen through a door leading from the garage.

“I saw him (Stanewich) lying before the stove and the refrigerator, and I knew he was hurt bad,” she said.

Only after reaching down and pulling Stanewich’s mask away did Steadman realize that he had shot a fellow deputy with whom he had a close professional and personal relationship, officials said. The two exchanged words as Stanewich lay dying on the floor, but Roache refused to describe their conversation.

Ironically, both deputies once worked for Roache at the central County Jail downtown.

In a statement released Thursday night, Roache said that, based on Van Ort’s suspicions that the second man also might be a deputy, each of the narcotics investigators present during the May 30 search of Van Ort’s house has been questioned.

“All were questioned regarding their individual activities during the (May) search,” Roache explained. “Each had to account for (his) whereabouts during the Stanewich assault on Van Ort and his house.”

Though Roache said that none of those deputies is currently a suspect, sheriff’s spokesman Dan Greenblat said Thursday that their photographs will be shown “very, very soon” to Van Ort for possible identification.

Stanewich’s involvement in the attempted robbery, Roache said, makes it impossible to dismiss the possibility that a second police officer also may have been involved.

“Obviously, given the fact that a deputy sheriff was involved in the crime, that would lead . . . at least to conjecture that there’s a possibility there might be another law-enforcement officer involved,” Roache said at a news conference at the sheriff’s Poway substation. “But we have no information to substantiate that.”

Van Ort said Thursday that he believes that Stanewich was “stalking my house” after the May 30 search, which authorities said stemmed from an anonymous tip that there were illegal drugs in the house.

During that search by a half-dozen plain-clothed deputies, the investigators examined Van Ort’s safe, which he said contained jewelry, family heirlooms and the undisclosed amount of cash generated by his grandmother’s sale of the Indiana farm.

The next day, Van Ort said, he noticed Stanewich in the back yard of his home. When he confronted the deputy, Stanewich told him that he had returned because “there was no record of my urine test,” Van Ort said.

After that purported problem was cleared up by a telephone call to sheriff’s officials, Van Ort noticed that a window screen had been tampered with in the back yard area where Stanewich had been.

“I thought he was trying to set me up, plant drugs in my house,” Van Ort said.

Van Ort also complained that the sheriff’s deputies first to arrive on the scene Wednesday “treated me like a suspect,” leaving the handcuffs in place as he was forced to wait in the back yard of the home. In defense of his deputies, Roache noted that they encountered “a very chaotic situation . . . that took some time to sort out.”

Fearing that the accomplice might return, Van Ort and his family did not sleep in their home Wednesday night, returning only for the press conference.

“We have lots of questions,” lawyer Anderson added. “First, why does Don Van Ort have to have personal protection and dogs to protect himself from law enforcement? Something serious has happened here. Why hasn’t the second officer been identified and brought in? We’re in fear for Don’s life. He’s still out there.”

Van Ort has described the accomplice as a slightly built male with dark complexion, possibly Latino or Asian, with dark, medium-length hair.

Conceding that the general description gives investigators little to work with, Roache said homicide detectives hope that fingerprints and other evidence from Stanewich’s personal car, which was found parked near Van Ort’s house, might yield further clues to the accomplice’s identity. Stanewich’s county car also was impounded and examined by investigators Thursday, Roache added.

“There’s not as much (evidence about the accomplice) as I would like to have,” Roache said. “But we do have some potential--and I use that term advisedly--potential leads that might eventually lead us to some identity of the second individual. But I wouldn’t characterize them at this point in time as tremendously strong (or say) it’s a sure bet that we’re going to be able to identify who that second person is.”

Though expressing grief over Stanewich’s death, Roache has ordered that, because of the unsavory circumstances surrounding the shooting, the customary procedures in police officers’ deaths--flags being flown at half staff, black tape affixed to badges and uniformed deputies appearing at the funeral--not be observed in this case.

“There have been many, many police officers over the years . . . who have paid the ultimate price of sacrificing their life to protect the public,” Roache explained. “That’s an honor that we cherish. And, while I have tremendous personal remorse and sorrow at Deputy Stanewich’s untimely death, it was under circumstances that were not honorable. Therefore, as much as I would like to be able to do so for the family’s benefit, it would not be appropriate to bestow that type of honor.”

However, if the family so desires, he will personally attend Stanewich’s funeral, Roache said.

Calling the episode “as inexplicable as it is repulsive,” Roache said investigators may find it easier to learn how Wednesday’s events occurred than to understand why they happened.

“This is one of those times when you might never completely figure out the whys ,” a pensive Roache said. “It’s an aberration, it’s a tragedy. We all regret that it happens in any law-enforcement organization. Human beings make mistakes, and human beings do things in all walks of life that are illegal, unethical, immoral and, in retrospect,

We all say it should have never happened.

“But, of all the people who would know that there was nothing to be gained from this sort of activity, and that there was imminent danger to yourself and others, it would be a law-enforcement officer.”