A judge has issued an arrest warrant for a woman accused of setting fire to a bank and a massage parlour at Hamilton last year, the blaze causing a 63-year-old woman inside to suffer smoke inhalation.
Sharlene Williams, 38, was in December released on Supreme Court bail and placed on house arrest while she waited for a bed in a residential rehabilitation program to become available.
But since being given bail, Williams has been repeatedly arrested and failed to appear in court over the fire.
Williams is accused of using pieces of cardboard to start a fire at the exterior of the NAB building and Shenti massage parlour in Beaumont Street between 5am and 6am on June 28 last year.
The fire spread quickly through the wall and into the roof of the building before firefighters arrived and extinguished the blaze.
Police said a 63-year-old woman inside the massage parlour was treated by paramedics for smoke inhalation.
The motive for the fire remains unclear, but police allege they were able to identify Williams as the woman who sparked the blaze against the exterior wall of the building before fleeing the scene.
Williams was refused bail after her arrest and had indicated she intended to plead guilty, but the DPP elected to prosecute the matter and it was drawn into the Early Appropriate Guilty Plea (EAGP) process.
The result of that was that Williams was unable to enter a plea until the brief of evidence had been served, the charges had been finalised and a case conference had been held, and she spent six months behind bars waiting for police to serve a forensics report.
She was granted bail in the NSW Supreme Court in December, her lawyers arguing she had been accepted into a residential rehabilitation program and could be placed on house arrest until a bed became available.
Despite Williams' long criminal history and numerous convictions for failing to appear in court, the DPP did not oppose bail, and Williams was released on a number of strict conditions.
But since then, Williams has repeatedly failed to appear in court to face the charge, even when lawyers said the matter had been settled and she just needed to enter a plea.
Despite her non-appearances, prosecutors had not previously asked for an arrest warrant for Williams because she had been in touch with her lawyers.
That changed this week when she failed to appear again and Judge Robert Stone issued a warrant for her arrest.
