Tampabay: Deputies draw guns on teen babysitter

"Hi," a Pinellas sheriff's dispatcher said. The house alarm had sounded. "Do you live here?"

[Times photo: Carrie Pratt]
Amanda Savas, 15, a freshman honors student at Countryside High, was babysitting at the home of ex-Devil Rays player Mike DiFelice in Safety Harbor when the incident occurred.

"No, I'm babysitting," Amanda said.

The dispatcher told her to go outside and tell deputies who had responded to the alarm. Amanda, a cordless phone at her ear, stepped outside.

A dozen deputies with guns drawn ordered her to drop the phone and get on the ground.

"They're pointing guns at me," Amanda said to the dispatcher, sobbing. She cried out to the deputies, "I'm babysitting."

Apparently convinced she was a burglar, deputies quickly turned Amanda's after-school job into a nightmare.

The incident on Feb. 19 left Amanda's father, Chris Savas, irate at sheriff's deputies, saying they needlessly escalated a routine false alarm into a life-threatening incident.

"They acted like Rambo," Savas, 43, an operations manager for Federal Express, said on Tuesday. "If one of these rambunctious cops had thought that cell phone was a gun, I'd be missing a daughter right now. This is outrageous."

Amanda, a freshman honors student at Countryside High School, was babysitting a 3-year-old and an 11-month-old girl for former Tampa Bay Devil Rays catcher Mike DiFelice, a friend of her family who now plays in the St. Louis Cardinals organization.

Sheriff Everett Rice defended his deputies, saying they did nothing improper. But he isn't happy about the incident.

"Innocent people should not be afraid of the police," the sheriff said. "I was told (by the deputies supervisors) that they did everything by the book. If that's the case, the book needs to be changed."

Rice said he would examine his office's policy on investigating residential alarms in hopes of avoid a repeat situation.

Police investigate thousands of residential alarms each year. In the overwhelming majority of cases, police say, the alarms prove to be nothing -- the wind, or a faulty connection.

Amanda was picked up at school by DiFelice's wife, Tish DiFelice, and dropped off with the kids at the home at 919 Wyngate Court in Safety Harbor. Mrs. DiFelice said the alarm was going off when she arrived at the house.

Mrs. DiFelice said the alarm had gone off by accident before, and she figured it was just another false alarm. She turned the alarm off and said nothing of it to Amanda, who had not heard the alarm.

For some reason, the alarm company, Brinks Home Security Inc., was unable to reach Mrs. DiFelice to ask if everything was okay.

"I just feel bad," said Mrs. DiFelice who had been rushing to make a physical therapy appointment. "I should have called Brinks or done something. I was under the gun and in a hurry."

Brinks, which declined to comment, called the Sheriff's Office, which sent deputies to investigate, as they do all unexplained alarms.

Deputies, guns drawn, found an opened gate. They noticed a window slightly off its track. They saw Amanda peeking out at them, and thought her behavior suspicious, the Sheriff's Office said.

Deputies said they knocked at the door and windows to get her attention. Amanda said nobody knocked.

She said that when saw deputies in the yard she called her father. He told her to lock the door and draw the blinds. He started driving over to the house to make sure all was safe.

Deputies positioned themselves around the house, then told the dispatcher to call the house. Amanda picked up the phone.

She sounded relieved to hear from the dispatcher why the deputies were there, explaining on the phone, "It was kind of scaring me."

Her biggest scare was yet to come.

As the dispatcher talked to her, a deputy radioed in, "I've got somebody coming out the front door."

"10-4," a dispatcher told him. "It's the babysitter."

It's unclear whether deputies heard the dispatcher. But they treated Amanda like a burglary suspect, ordering her face-down and handcuffing her for five minutes, she said.

During the incident, the dispatcher was still on the phone, sounding a little rattled that Amanda was no longer on the line. In the background, a deputy can be heard over the phone saying, "Put your hands on your back."

The dispatcher said, "It's just a little girl."

Said Amanda: "I thought they were going to shoot me. I didn't know what was going on."

Amanda said they asked her to prove she was the babysitter, and she gave them Mrs. DiFelice's cell phone number. After confirming, they released her.

The DiFelices' 3-year-old daughter was crying, thinking her babysitter was being carted off to jail for not wearing her seat belt, Amanda said.

Upon learning hours later that a window had been found ajar, Mrs. DiFelice said she became convinced a burglar did try to get into the house that day. Other homes in the area had recently been burglarized.

While unhappy that guns had been pointed at Amanda, she said, deputies were in a tough position and could not be sure who was coming out of the house.

"Look at all the high school crime. You can never be too sure. A 5-year-old can shoot a gun," she said.

Amanda's family has hired Largo attorney John Trevena, who says the incident "was a clear excessive use of deadly force. The girl didn't look like a threat."

Amanda, who lives with her family in Clearwater, said she was too nervous to finish babysitting that day, though she plans to return.

She said a deputy later said to her, "We just hope you understand why we did what we did."

Said Amanda: "They never apologized for anything. I still don't understand why they pointed their guns at me."

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