It wasn’t a dog catcher’s uniform that awaited Elon’s mayor Emily Sharpe this week after she apparently helped liberate one neighborhood from the predations of a particularly vicious canine.
But the residents of Cable Square did have a little something in store to show Sharpe their appreciation for her role in the capture and removal of this real-life Hound of the Baskervilles.
During a town council meeting on Monday, Cable Square resident Rochelle Ford recounted the mayor’s intervention after this dog, which belongs to James Melvin King, Jr., got loose and mauled another dog to death.
This, incidentally, was the second time that this dog had fatally attacked someone’s pet. The previous episode, which occurred in the fall, had prompted an outcry from the community and compelled the town’s police department to demand that King keep the animal restrained.
The failure of these measures to prevent another pet’s death had initially left the residents of Cable Square questioning the efficacy of their municipal government. Ford added, however, that Sharpe intervened at just the right time to restore the neighborhood’s faith in the town’s leaders.
“She took swift action,” Ford recounted during the council’s designated public comment period. “When she heard our plea, she called the sheriff and made sure that the sheriff escorted the dog out of the community.”
Ford’s account of this incident has since been challenged by municipal officials.
In an email to The Alamance News, Kathleen Patterson, Elon’s municipal clerk, observed that it wasn’t anyone with the sheriff’s office who eventually removed the dog from the neighborhood.
“The Elon police department fully managed the situation in the Cable Square neighborhood,” Patterson explained in this unsolicited communique on Wednesday. “The Sheriff’s department was not involved.”
In any case, it was Sharpe who would wind up getting the credit from the grateful residents of Cable Square.
During Monday’s comment period, one of Ford’s neighbors even presented the mayor with a gift-wrapped box as a token of the neighborhood’s appreciation. Although Sharpe didn’t immediately unwrap the box, she later recalled that it contained a set of pajamas to wear as she recuperates from cancer treatment, which she has openly discussed with her constituents.
