BARABOO — A Merrimac woman faces up to six years in prison on a charge that she ran off with a man’s car after spending the night with him.

Kristie S. Sheldon-Stich, 37, is charged in Sauk County Circuit Court with operating a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent.

According to court documents, the man said he met Sheldon-Stich at a bar in Merrimac last Friday night. He followed her to her apartment in a 1995 BMW owned by his cousin and spent the night with her.

The man awoke about 4:30 a.m. and the car was gone, records say, so he called Sheldon-Stich. She said she was in Janesville and too drunk to return the car.

The car’s owner’s is out of the country, so investigators contacted his wife in Baraboo, and she confirmed the man had permission to use the car and Sheldon-Stich did not.

Contacted on Sunday by a sheriff’s deputy, Sheldon-Stich referred to a man she met in the bar as her boyfriend and said he had given her permission to use the car, according to the records.

On Monday, Sheldon-Stich was released on a $1,000 signature bond, and the judge ordered her to have no contact with the driver. She’s due in court on May 28.