Say Springs House Had 4 Illegal Bedrooms and a Pet Deer

A 911 call in which a neighbor complained that a deer was being kept in a backyard as a pet took East Hampton Town police, and then code enforcement officers, to 7 Cedar Street in Springs on Tuesday afternoon, leading to 17 charges against the owner of the house, Angel Otavalo.

Most of these were misdemeanor charges. Kelly Kampf, assistant director for public safety for the town, said that the house, which has a certificate of occupancy allowing three bedrooms, had been converted into a seven-bedroom residence. Two of those illegal bedrooms were in the basement, with no safe egress in case of emergency, she said.

The deer was not the cause of the call to code enforcement by police. Rather, Ms. Kampf said, it was the eight cars parked in the driveway.

The initial 911 call came in at about 2:15 p.m. Code enforcement was contacted soon thereafter. Because the end of the day was approaching for the officers in the Code Enforcement Department, Ms. Kampf, who was promoted to her post just a month ago, and her supervisor, David Betts, the town’s director of public safety, took the call themselves.

Ms. Kampf said that there were eight people in the house at the time, however, it appeared that many more lived there, but were out at work or at school. In several of the rooms, “there were children’s cribs, children’s beds, and toys,” she said.

Mr. Otavalo, who purchased the house in 2006 for $800,000, according to public records, was charged with six counts of lacking a certificate of occupancy for various rooms, two counts of creating a bedroom without legal egress, one charge of illegally wiring a room via an extension cord, three charges of constructing accessory structures without a permit, and four charges for not having either a smoke or carbon monoxide detector in rooms.

Ms. Kampf said she and her supervisor were taken by surprise by what they found. It appears that the town had never received a complaint about the house on Cedar Street, a dead end off of Harrison Avenue. “They were under the radar,” she said.

The deer was found in the backyard with a dog collar around its neck, which was secured via a rope tied to a stake in the ground. It did not appear to be afraid of humans, according to the town. It was turned over to the State Department of Environmental Conservation, which charged Mr. Otavalo with unlawful possession of wildlife, a violation subject to a $250 fine or 15 days in jail.

According to Aphrodite Montalvo, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the deer was less than a year old. It will be cared for at the Holtsville Ecology Center, which has a license to collect and possess wildlife, including white-tailed deer.

"Deer and other wildlife that become habituated to humans cannot be successfully released back into the wild," Ms. Montalvo wrote in an email. "Keeping wildlife is illegal without proper permitting. Unfortunately, wildlife raised in this manner must often be euthanized due to the danger they can present to people and the environment. It is important to remember that wildlife should remain wild and do not make good or safe pets."