Police: Banker Driving Porsche Punched Girl
Victim, 16, slugged in face after cutting off car
DECEMBER 22--An investment banker driving a Porsche convertible punched a 16-year-old girl in the face after berating the teenager for cutting him off in traffic on a Florida roadway, police charge.
Investigators say Stephen Irvin Saunders IV “became enraged” Thursday evening when the victim “accidentally cut off the suspect’s vehicle” on a roadway about three miles from Saunders’s 
waterfront Tampa home (which he purchased with his wife for $800,000 in 2019).
According to a court affidavit, the 47-year-old Saunders followed the girl to an intersection, where he “cut in front of the victim’s vehicle and stopped in front of her at a red light.” Saunders exited his Porsche and yelled, “What the fuck are you doing? You stupid bitch! You cut me off!”
The teenager heard Saunders’s 10:30 PM raging clearly because her window was rolled down, a Tampa Police Department detective noted.
Saunders, seen above, then allegedly reached into the driver’s side window and “punched her in the face with a closed fist.” The girl, who “has a very youthful appearance,” suffered “redness, soreness and bruising to the left side of her jaw.”
The juvenile got a good look at her assailant’s vehicle “because it is very distinct (White/Black convertible Porsche 911 with “911” boldly printed on the driver’s side door),” the affidavit states.
After detectives identified Saunders as the registered owner of the suspect vehicle, the victim “quickly and definitively” picked out his photo from an array of images shown to her by cops.
For allegedly reaching into the girl’s car and slugging her, Saunders was charged with burglary of a conveyance with assault or battery, a felony. He was released from the Hillsborough County jail on $15,000 bond and has pleaded not guilty to the road rage count. A booking sheet identifies Saunders as a self-employed investment banker. He was previously a manager of Alternative Capital Strategies, LLC, a Tampa investment firm that has been dissolved, according to state records.
A 2019 Google Street View photo (seen below) appears to show Saunders’s customized Porsche parked in the driveway of his prior Tampa residence. (2 pages)
