Off The Beat: Pulling a fire alarm may not get you a ride home

Will Greenlee | Treasure Coast Newspapers

MARTIN COUNTY — Need help getting home?

Just pull a fire alarm.

That apparently was the strategy employed Aug. 6 by a South Carolina woman on Hutchinson Island near Stuart Beach, according to an arrest affidavit.

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A Martin County sheriff’s deputy about 12:27 a.m. went to an address in the 200 block of Northeast Edgewater Drive after a report of a suspicious person.

A woman reportedly was knocking on a door and asking for police to be called because her phone was dead.

A deputy couldn’t find the woman, but the deputy heard a fire alarm at a nearby building.

“While pulling up to the building I observed a female on the fourth floor attempting to flag me down,” the affidavit states.

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The woman, identified as Dequaisia Taylor, 20, said friends dropped her off, her phone was dead and she needed to go home.

She said she pulled the fire alarm to get the attention of someone.

Taylor said her home was in Broward County, but didn’t know the address. She had a South Carolina driver’s license, but was unaware of her address there.

Taylor was arrested on a false fire alarm charge and taken to the Martin County Jail.

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