A man who is accused of stabbing his estranged wife to death Sunday in Ellicott City had been in custody less than four hours earlier on a charge of violating a protective order.

A district court commissioner ordered Alexander Stephenson to be released on his personal recognizance and he walked out of a detention center in Westminster at 4:18 a.m., Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees said.

At his initial appearance, Stephenson, 53, of Ellicott City, told the district court commissioner that he served 24 years in the U.S. Army and worked at Leidos as a military planner.

His court-appointed attorney, Angela Holloway, argued that he was not a flight risk or a danger. She said her client disputed that he made the phone calls that constituted the allegations against him.

District Court Commissioner Kotoshia Ade-Oni said she was releasing Stephenson because he did not have a criminal record. But she warned him about the consequences of running afoul of the law.

“Lawfully, you did not do what was right, and you knew that, and you knew the laws and rules,” Ade-Oni said.

“But I do not believe that you’re a danger,” she added. “I believe that you are capable enough to listen to the rules and get yourself together — whatever you need to get yourself together — and make it to court and not recur these issues that have happened tonight. Understood, sir?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Stephenson responded.

At 8:13 a.m., Howard County Police responded to a home on Huntsmans Run in a small wooded neighborhood off Triadelphia Road for a report that Alexander Stephenson had stabbed his wife, Amethyst Stephenson. She was 47.

“Caller’s advising their dad just stabbed their mom with a small black knife,” a 911 dispatcher can be heard on police radio. “Unknown where the suspect has gone.”

Alexander Stephenson turned himself in at about 10:30 a.m. at a police station in Ellicott City to face charges of first-degree murder and violating a protective order, said Sherry Llewellyn, a Howard County Police spokesperson, in an email.

He was then taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center with what police described as non-life-threatening self-inflicted wounds.

It’s unclear who is representing him and when he will appear in court.

Court records help establish a timeline of what led up to the deadly stabbing.

On Jan. 12, Amethyst Stephenson sought a protective order in Howard County Circuit Court against Alexander Stephenson, alleging that he had made “threats of violence” and caused “mental injury of a child.”

“He has made veiled and direct threats of violence against me and the children,” she wrote in her petition. “He has threatened to kill us.”

She asserted that her husband had punched walls and destroyed property, including computers, TVs and iPads.

That day, Circuit Judge Maurice C. Frazier granted a temporary protective order, which was extended several times.

On Feb. 2, Alexander Stephenson agreed to a final protective order, which was effective for two years.

His attorneys in the case, William Prunka and Arya Saleh, could not be reached for comment.

Amanda Denison, Amethyst Stephenson’s attorney, also could not be reached for comment.

Five days later, around 8 p.m. Saturday, the Maryland State Police were called to a High’s store on Sykesville Road in Carroll County for a fight taking place inside a vehicle.

Police spoke to an employee who told them that he went outside to figure out what was going on because a car horn had been going off.

The employee saw two people fighting inside an SUV in the parking lot and called police.

Troopers talked to Alexander Stephenson, who they allege smelled like alcohol and admitted to having a couple of drinks. He told police the situation was overblown.

They then spoke with his 17-year-old son, who reported that he had been driving when it became apparent that his father was drunk, so he tried to call his stepmother, Amethyst Stephenson.

That’s when Alexander Stephenson grabbed his son’s cellphone and threw it out of the moving SUV. The son pulled into the parking lot, where a scuffle ensued as he tried to stop his father from grabbing the vehicle’s keys, police allege.

Alexander Stephenson’s 14-year-old daughter, who’d been in the back seat, told troopers that her father also scratched her right eye.

Later, Amethyst Stephenson showed up at the convenience store and gas station to pick up her stepchildren and reported that her husband tried to call her twice — at 7:43 p.m. and 7:44 p.m. — despite the fact that she had a protective order against him.

Police arrested Alexander Stephenson at 9:43 p.m. on a charge of violating a protective order.

The district court commissioner also approved charges including second-degree assault, malicious destruction of property and intoxicated endangerment, and issued a summons for Alexander Stephenson to appear in court.

He was set to return on April 8 for his trial.

Less than four hours after being released, his wife, who had been so afraid of him she sought a protective order, was dead.

Under Maryland law, if Alexander Stephenson had faced allegations that he abused or threatened to abuse his wife, a district court commissioner would not have been allowed to release him.

Amanda Rodriguez, CEO of TurnAround Inc., a domestic violence program and rape crisis center that serves Baltimore City and Baltimore and Howard counties, said she thinks there should be more protections in place for survivors when people are accused of violating a protective order.

Often, Rodriguez said, survivors don’t know their abuser has been released, so they lack time to get to a safe location.

On Monday, Huntsmans Run was quiet. A garbage can stood in the snow alongside two packages by the mailbox in front of the home. A few cars were parked outside.

In the petition for protective order, Amethyst Stephenson alleged that her husband had access to weapons, including one handgun in the home as well as several others that were in a storage facility.

She also reported that he had knives.