By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

Nov. 1, 2002

OAKLAND —An Alameda County deputy sheriff caught up in the Outback Steakhouse robbery testified today that she was never told about a second call to police concerning the crime before entering the restaurant.

Angela Schwab said she was dispatched the night of Dec. 11, 1998 to the Regional Street restaurant after someone there dialed 911 but hung up before authorities could answer. A call back reached Outback proprietor Jim McGinnis, who said everything was fine.

But dispatchers logged another call, this one from a security company reporting that it had received an emergency signal from the same restaurant. Outback manager Jeremy Williams testified earlier this month that he had activated the silent alarm while being held at gunpoint with about two dozen others in the restaurant’s kitchen.

That warning, however, never made it to Schwab, she said.

“I think it would have helped,” she said, referring to how authorities might have handled the call differently with the additional information. “With a 911 hang-up and an alarm call, there may have been more officers there.

“If there was a robbery in progress, there would have been a whole series of officers dispatched out.”

Instead, only Schwab and Deputy John Paul Monego responded separately to what seemed like a false alarm, a fairly routine practice for patrol officers. With her headlights doused, Schwab steered her police cruiser into the restaurant parking lot.

“I didn’t want anybody to se me,” she said Thursday during cross examination. “I was still cautious. It could be anything.”

Through the window, she spotted four men who appeared to be laughing and talking, she said. Schwab slipped into foyer and found herself staring at a gunman, she said.

She was taken hostage then stripped of her gun.

Monego was moments behind Schwab, who at the time was being led to the back of the Outback, she said. He was fired on while coming through the restaurant’s front doors.

Prosecutor Jon Goodfellow has said that the shooter went outside and finished off the young Brentwood father with a hail of bullets.

Authorities believe Reuben Eliceo Vasquez, 27, was the triggerman, firing on Monego with a gun stolen from the truck of a Central Valley business owner. His friends, Miguel Galindo Sifuentes, 23, and Hai Minh Le, 23, carried pellet guns, officials have said.

Vasquez was the only one of the three to test positive for gun powder residue, lawyers have said.

All three are charged with first degree murder charges and special circumstances. They could face the death penalty if found guilty.