DURHAM - The daughter of Police Chief Steve Chalmers failed to appear in traffic court Thursday, two days after her arrest on an unrelated felony assault charge involving an automobile.

Police also failed to serve two outstanding criminal summonses on Stefanie Chalmers, 25, while she was in custody.

Stefanie Chalmers was arrested Tuesday on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting serious injury, court records show.

She is accused of striking a woman with a car the night of April 28 outside a home on Rhyn Court in northern Durham, according to police reports.

Though the assault is said to have taken place in April, it took two months for an investigator to file charges, court records show.

After her arrest, Chalmers was released on unsecured bail to the custody of her mother and was told not to have any contact with the alleged victim of the assault, the records show.

Two days later, Chalmers, of 108 N. Guthrie Ave., was supposed to appear in traffic court on a citation for parking in a handicapped parking space on North Roxboro Road in April. A court official called her name, but Chalmers failed to appear, records show.

At the time of her arrest in the assault case, there were two outstanding criminal summonses listed for Chalmers, accusing her of writing two worthless checks in 2003.

The criminal summonses were issued two years after Chalmers is said to have written bad checks to Wal-Mart and Winn-Dixie stores amounting to $115, according to court records.

But the papers weren't served. The police investigator who charged Chalmers in the assault found the two summonses but did not serve them because they had a different spelling of Chalmers' first name, said Durham police spokeswoman Kammie Michael.

Court records spell Chalmers' name as both Stefanie and Stephanie. However, Chalmers signed court documents using an "f" in her first name. Records also show the same date of birth and North Carolina driver's license number despite the different spellings of Chalmers' first name.

The unserved papers are two of more than 10,000 unserved warrants and summonses weighing on Durham police officers to serve. With each arrest, officers, magistrates and booking officers at the Durham County jail are expected to check whether the defendant is wanted on other charges.

According to police and judges, there are two main reasons most unserved warrants linger long past the date of the alleged offense: the absence of a special unit to tackle the paper backlog and the inability of officers to locate defendants.

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