Woodway officials say they intend to investigate why a woman, who was jailed last weekend because her son missed 50 days of school since August, only served a fraction of her sentence before being released by McLennan County Jail officials.

Woodway City Judge Vik Deivanayagam found Alisha Stolarz in contempt of court last week and ordered her to spend from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Sunday locked up in the McLennan County Jail.

County records show she was booked into jail at 3:57 a.m. Saturday and released at 9:25 p.m. Saturday, serving about 17 hours of her 48-hour contempt sentence.

Alisha Stolarz served only about 17 hours of her 48-hour sentence for contempt of court.

Sheriff’s Office Capt. John Kolinek, the county jail administrator, said Stolarz actually arrived at the county jail at 8 p.m. Friday, despite what county records indicate. He said he is unsure why it would take eight hours to get her booked into jail.

Kolinek said he spoke to Woodway Public Safety Capt. Barney Witt about Stolarz’s case last week. He acknowledged he initially told Witt the jail would not accept Stolarz for her weekend sentence because Kolinek thought she was being jailed only on a Class C misdemeanor.

Witt said he explained to Kolinek that her sentence was based on a judicial commitment order for contempt of court and that Woodway officials fully expected her to serve the entire sentence.

As the weekend progressed, Kolinek said, additional space for women became necessary because of the normal amount of defendants who serve weekend jail time and because at least five local police agencies were conducting warrant roundups, which added to the already crowded female jail population.

“All that put us behind the eight ball,” Kolinek said. “That’s the reason she was cut loose early. We had to make room for inmates with higher-grade criminal offenses. They take precedent.”

Stolarz, 26, who said she works in advertising, said Tuesday she was not given a reason for her early release. She declined additional comment.

“We were very disappointed that she was released early,” Witt said. “We thought we had already addressed that problem ahead of time. I think we are going to have to talk to the jail people and the sheriff, in particular, to find out how this can be resolved. Our concern is that a court with jurisdiction issued an order, and we would have preferred that the order be fully carried out.”

Sheriff Larry Lynch did not return phone calls to his office Tuesday.

Child missed school

Woodway city records indicate that Stolarz’s 7-year-old son, a first-grader at Woodway Elementary School, had 26 absences from school without a parent call, four with a parent call, 11 absences with a doctor’s note and 10 tardy citations from August 2009 to January.

Since January, he has had six unexcused absences, three absences with doctor’s notes and eight tardy citations.

City prosecutor Rebecca Griffin, working with school officials, filed parent contributing to nonattendance of a minor charges, a Class C misdemeanor, against Stolarz.

At a hearing in January, Woodway City Judge Rod Goble fined Stolarz $584, including court costs, and warned that she would be in contempt of court if her son missed school again or was cited for being late.

“She said her son is sick a lot, but she was kind of flippant about the whole thing,” Griffin said.

Contempt hearing

After her son missed more school and Stolarz failed to pay her fine, Woodway officials held a contempt hearing last week, this one presided over by Deivanayagam.

Deivanayagam tried to speak to the sheriff about the situation Tuesday afternoon but was not able to meet with him, he said.

“I just need to try to find out the situation with regard to how in the future contempt orders will be handled by the county jail,” Deivanayagam said.

Griffin said Child Protective Services has opened an investigation into the situation, adding that the city also might file additional charges against Stolarz or seek another contempt citation.

History of releases

In August, several McLennan County judges were angered after it was discovered that as many as 62 county jail inmates who were ordered to serve weekend jail sentences were turned away during a weekend in July after jail officials gave them credit for serving the whole weekend, despite being at the jail only a matter of minutes.

Sheriff’s officials attributed the situation to jail overcrowding, but at least one judge stopped sentencing defendants to weekend jail time until he was sure the matter had been resolved.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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