City Woman, 31, Accused of Stealing Employer's Vehicle, Smoking Crack, Spraypainting Car, Passing Out

A 31-year-old Norwalk woman faces a slew of criminal charges after police found her slumped over and unconscious in her employer’s car with crack, smoking pipe and other drugs.

Karolina Polak, of 15 Burwell St., was charged with possession of narcotics, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of drug paraphernalia within 1,500 feet of a school, illegal possession near a school, criminal impersonation, criminal mischief, failure to keep a drug in its original container and first-degree failure to appear.

Police say they received a call around 6:36 p.m. Thursday that someone appeared to have overdosed in a vehicle near 8 Couch St. There, an officer saw Polak apparently passed out and holding a cellphone as well as a glass pipe used for smoking crack cocaine, police said.

According to a police report, there was also spray paint outside the vehicle and on her hands. The officer woke her up and called an ambulance, police said. Polak said she was OK and had only smoked crack, police said. When asked about the spray paint, Polak said she was planning to paint the car and wanted to get a head start on that work, police said.

While this was happening, the owner of the car—a Stamford resident for whom Polak had been employed as a house cleaner—reported that vehicle missing to city police down there.

Police had the vehicle towed to find out what was going on and discovered more paraphernalia on Polak, including some yellow and green pills which may have been clonazepam—a barbiturate, experts say. They also found a bag of crack cocaine, police said.

Polak gave police the wrong name during processing, which led to the criminal impersonation charge, police said. That may have been because police already had a warrant out for her arrest, police said, which yielded the failure to appear charge.

A $10,000 bond was set and Polak is scheduled to appear March 22 in state Superior Court in Norwalk.