On probation after serial stowaway attempts, woman gets 177 days for returning to airport
Ten days ago, Marilyn Jean Hartman managed to sneak onto a flight from San Jose, California, to Los Angeles without a ticket.
Discovered once she arrived in LA on Aug. 4, the 62-year-old San Francisco Bay area resident was arrested, charged with a misdemeanor and released on probation two days later after she pleaded no contest. The next day, Aug. 7, she was arrested again at Los Angeles International Airport for violating a condition of her probation for being there without a ticket.
Now she has been sentenced to 177 days in the Los Angeles County jail for the probation violation, according to the Associated Press and the Contra Costa Times.
Echoing the words of a fellow prosecutor in the Bay Area, where Hartman has also been arrested for airport-related offenses, deputy city attorney Spencer Hart said Hartman rebuffed attempts to try to place her in a program that might have been able to help her. Instead, he said at a Wednesday hearing, Hartman preferred to go to jail.
Commissioner Alan Rubin asked Hartman if this was really true. She replied: “That’s correct,” the newspaper recounts.
Rubin said he didn’t know whether jail would be effective in dealing with Hartman’s behavior. However, he told her repeatedly: “This has got to stop.”
After her no-contest plea last week at the airport courthouse, Hartman spoke with KTLA. She said she once worked as a legal secretary, but has been living in a homeless shelter because of income issues.
She also promised to straighten up and fly right in the future. “I want to go with a paid ticket. … I want to do everything legal,” she told the station at the time. Saying it was “clearly wrong” to stow away to LA, she added: “It was stupid and it is something I don’t want to repeat.”
Hat tip: CBS News.
