McCollum Held On $150,000 Cash Bond; Affidavit Says He Signed Up For Wife’s School Tour, Parked Where She Would Have To Pass Him

BENTONVILLE — Former state Rep. Austin McCollum is being held on a $150,000 cash-only bond after a Benton County sheriff’s detective swore that he registered for a school open house his wife was attending, looked into her car and then circled the parking lot until he found a space she would have to walk past, all while under a court order to stay 1,500 feet from her.

Prosecutors have also moved to revoke his release in the domestic battering case from August. Circuit Judge Brad Karren will hear that motion at 8:30 a.m. Monday, and the state has subpoenaed four witnesses.

McCollum, 35, of Bentonville is charged with first-degree stalking, a Class B felony punishable by five to 20 years in prison, and violating an order of protection, a Class A misdemeanor. The felony case was opened Thursday on Karren’s own order, which cited “the Court’s concerns regarding these Defendants active criminal cases” and assigned it to his division alongside the earlier one.

District Judge Jeff Conner set the bond and ordered McCollum to wear an ankle monitor if he is released. He remained in the Benton County jail Friday afternoon, where he has been since his arrest Tuesday. He pleaded not guilty in the earlier case Sept. 8.

The probable cause affidavit, sworn Wednesday by Detective Sgt. Ralph Bartley of the sheriff’s criminal investigation division, was filed Thursday. ABN reported the arrest Wednesday, before the affidavit was public.

According to the affidavit, McCollum has been under a no-contact order since his Aug. 1 arrest, and Circuit Judge Xollie Duncan’s two-year order of protection, entered Aug. 25, bars him from his wife’s home, her workplace, their children’s preschool and her church. On Aug. 19, he called her cell phone. His attorney reported the call as an accident, and no action was taken.

The stalking charge grows out of an open house for prospective students at a private school in Springdale on Sept. 22. The event had been on the couple’s shared calendar since before the August arrest, the affidavit says. His wife had her attorney tell McCollum’s attorney that she would attend, and on Sept. 21 she was told he would not be there. Her tour was at 9 a.m.

At 6:47 p.m. that night, McCollum registered himself for the 11 a.m. tour.

Bartley wrote that he obtained the school’s surveillance video on Sept. 28. It shows McCollum pulling into the lot at 10:04 a.m. in his gray Subaru Outback, driving past open spaces and parking at 10:08. He walked to his wife’s car and looked inside for several seconds, then went into the building, where a staff member began showing him around. When the staff member stepped into an office, McCollum stayed in the hallway, looking toward the end of it, where his wife was standing with her tour group.

He left the building at 10:20, stood outside his car for about a minute looking toward hers, and drove off at 10:30. At 10:55 he was back, cutting through open spaces against the flow of the lot, pulling into two spots and leaving them before settling on one 11 spaces from her car, on the opposite side of the same row. “Where Austin was parked, Ragen would have to walk past him to get to her car,” Bartley wrote.

His wife had seen him inside and told the school he was not supposed to be there. An armed security guard walked her out at 11:07. As they passed behind his car, she pointed him out. When she reached her car, McCollum got out of his and faced it, his back to the school. At 11:11, after she pulled away, he walked in for his tour, 11 minutes late.

Six days later, on Sept. 28, an employee at the children’s preschool in Bentonville saw McCollum drive through its parking lot around 5 p.m., the usual pickup time, turning to stare at the entrance as he went. His wife kept the children home the next day. That morning, a friend saw him walking on the sidewalk across the street from the school around 8 a.m., when she normally drops them off.

Deputies arrested him that day, Sept. 29. The Outback was in his garage. In an interview, McCollum said he did not see his wife at the Springdale school until after 11 a.m., declined to discuss the preschool parking lot and said he had been walking to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at a church. The church told Bartley it had no 7 a.m. meeting that day.

Bartley asked for the $150,000 cash bond, the ankle monitor and a new no-contact order covering the children. Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joshua Robinson approved the affidavit and, the same day, filed a verified motion asking Karren to revoke McCollum’s $10,000 bond in the August case. The motion lists the phone call, the open house and the two days outside the preschool, and notes that Duncan’s protection order gave his wife temporary custody of the children with supervised visitation for McCollum.

Also Thursday, at the request of defense attorney Shane Wilkinson, Karren ordered the sheriff’s office to let McCollum change into civilian clothes, shave and get a haircut before every in-person court appearance.

McCollum was arrested Aug. 1 after deputies were called to the couple’s Bentonville home shortly after midnight. The affidavit in that case says he blocked his wife from leaving a bedroom, pinned her face down with his knee on her neck, slammed a door on her hand, punched her and repeatedly slammed her head into the floor. He is charged with second-degree domestic battering, first-degree false imprisonment and aggravated assault on a family or household member. An omnibus hearing is set for Dec. 1.

His attorney filed a notice of appeal of the protection order Sept. 22, the same day as the open house.

McCollum served in the Arkansas House from 2017 and was majority leader from 2021 to 2023. He resigned his seat Aug. 5 and remains the Republican nominee for Benton County judge, with no opponent on the November ballot. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney General Tim Griffin have called on him to withdraw.

Whatever happens Monday, his name will still be on the ballot, and the county has already laid out what it intends to do if he wins.

County Judge Barry Moehring, who announced in July 2025 that he would retire at the end of his term, said in a Sept. 9 statement that McCollum should not take the oath of office. “With the specter of a potential felony conviction hanging over his head, combined with the seriousness of the charges he faces, Mr. McCollum would have neither the confidence nor the trust necessary to effectively carry out this vital role,” Moehring said. “He should not attempt it.”

If McCollum is elected but does not take the oath, Article 19, Section 5 of the Arkansas Constitution keeps Moehring in office as a holdover until a successor qualifies. Moehring said he would stay on from Jan. 1 for one purpose, keeping county operations stable, and set Feb. 28, 2027, as his target date to leave.

His resignation would then create a vacancy that the Quorum Court fills by appointment under Amendment 55 and state law. Moehring said two months should give the incoming justices of the peace time to run a public process with applications, interviews and citizen input before choosing the next county judge. “Uncertainty does not mean instability,” he said.

Moehring also noted the other path: McCollum is elected, remains legally qualified, takes the oath and becomes county judge while his cases are pending. A felony conviction would disqualify him from holding office.