Victim Claims 2nd Robber Also Was a Deputy : Crime: Authorities are investigating report that accomplice to masked officer--who was killed in holdup--was on force too.

The missing accomplice of a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy who was killed by a fellow officer as he robbed a home here was one of a team of deputies that had recently searched the house for drugs, the house’s owner claimed Thursday.

The homeowner, Donald Van Ort, 32, was tied up and beaten by off-duty Deputy Michael Stanewich in the robbery that ended when Stanewich, an undercover narcotics officer, was fatally shot by a colleague and close friend. Van Ort said he recognized Stanewich’s accomplice--who fled when Stanewich forced his way into the home at gunpoint--as the same deputy who came to the house with Stanewich in a May 30 drug search. No illegal drugs were found, but Van Ort said the officers noticed about $100,000 in cash in a safe.

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

Authorities said Thursday that none of the five or six officers taking part in the earlier drug search is a suspect. But Sheriff Jim Roache said that investigators have not ruled out the possibility that a second deputy may be involved. A sheriff’s spokesman said deputies’ photographs will be shown to Van Ort “very, very soon.”

Stanewich, 36, noticed the cash during the May drug search, officials said. They believe he planned to steal it when he showed up at the house Wednesday. Van Ort said the money--a total sheriff’s sources fixed at about $100,000--came from his grandmother’s sale of a family farm in Indiana.

At the news conference, Van Ort and his grandmother provided a dramatic account of the botched robbery.

Van Ort was in the shower when he heard the doorbell ring. When he reached the door, he recognized Stanewich and the second man, he said, and opened the door.

The two men appeared startled, he said, perhaps because it had taken him so long to come to the door. Stanewich, however, quickly pulled a stocking mask over his face and shoved Van Ort inside. The second man, apparently panicked, ran away.

“It’s a robbery, Grandma!” Van Ort shouted to his 82-year-old grandmother, Helen Van Ort.

As Stanewich handcuffed Van Ort and bound and gagged his grandmother, Van Ort’s girlfriend climbed unnoticed out a back window, scaled a six-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.’ ”

Arriving at the house with another officer at about 10:40 a.m. Wednesday, Deputy Gary Steadman walked into the kitchen and saw a masked man--Stanewich--beating and threatening to kill Van Ort, who lay handcuffed and hogtied, with a pillowcase soaked in lighter fluid encasing his head.

“He was looking for matches,” Van Ort said. “He said: ‘I’m going to light you on fire if you don’t give me the combination to your safe.’ I wouldn’t give it to him.”

According to officials, Steadman identified himself as a deputy and ordered the man in the stocking mask to freeze. But Stanewich, who had a pistol in his waistband, reached toward a knife on the sink and moved toward Steadman. When Stanewich ignored a second order to stop, Steadman fired three rounds and hit Stanewich twice in the upper body.

Only after he pulled the 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 would not describe their conversation.

Van Ort complained Thursday that deputies who arrived after the shooting “treated me like a suspect,” leaving him waiting in handcuffs in the back yard. In defense of his deputies, Roache noted that they found “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 at home Wednesday night, and returned only for the news conference.

Homicide detectives hope that fingerprints and other evidence from Stanewich’s car, parked near the house, will yield clues to the accomplice’s identity, Roache said.

Authorities also plan to investigate whether the 36-year-old Stanewich may have been involved in other criminal activities. Stanewich, a nine-year Sheriff’s Department veteran, recently was disciplined for conducting an unauthorized stakeout of a business, Roache said.

Roache ordered that customary observances of a police officer’s death--flags flown at half-staff, black tape affixed to badges--will not be observed.

“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 said. “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.”