ALMOND
Eagle drops cat onto car
Melissa Schlarb hopped in her Kia K5 and headed to work in Cherokee around 8 a.m. Nov. 19.
The drive along U.S. 74 East was about as mundane as every other morning. The 28-year-old Robbinsville resident was passing Southwestern Community College – Swain Center when she received a shocking drop-in from the animal kingdom.
“It was the craziest thing,” Schlarb said. “I saw a bald eagle and it had something in its feet. It was flying over and I thought, ‘That is so cool.’ All of a sudden, it was like a bomb just went off and there was glass everywhere. There was a dead cat in my passenger’s seat.”
The object clutched between the eagle’s claws had – in fact – been a small cat.
“I could tell the eagle had already been snacking on it,” Schlarb said, recalling the looks of the mangled carcass lying next to her. “Someone witnessed every little bit of it. He removed the cat. I was absolutely freaking out.”
Schlarb estimated that the eagle dropped its breakfast roughly 100 yards into her windshield. A falling animal can reach speeds of about 138.94 feet per second.
Schlarb added that she was driving in the fast lane at the time of the incident.
“I am lucky it didn’t come in on my side,” Schlarb said. “I was in the left lane, anyway. Just by instinct, you want to slam on the brakes. I am lucky there was no one driving around me.”
Schlarb was unharmed.
“I had to have the car towed,” she said. “There was glass everywhere. It tore back the roof.”
While the Kia is being repaired, Schlarb commutes to and from work with her supervisor, who also drives from Robbinsville. She thanked her boss.
“Always expect the unexpected,” Schlarb said. “I am not use to seeing bald eagles around here and thought it was cool …”
HAYESVILLE
Ex-jailer sentenced
A former captain of the Clay County Detention Center has pled guilty to two counts of felony embezzlement for crimes that occurred during her employment there.
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Krystal Dawn Ledford, 39, of Hayesville, plead guilty Dec. 1 in Superior Court. She was sentenced to 6 to 17 months in the N.C. Department of Adult Corrections, with the second count to run consecutive to the first one. The sentences were suspended. Ledford will spend no time in prison.
Sheriff Mark Buchanan said Ledford was placed on supervised probation for 60 months under regular terms and conditions. Additional conditions of her probation require that she pay restitution in the amount of $11,295.02 to Clay County government; that she does not serve as a trustee on any account of another person; and that she surrenders all N.C. law enforcement related credentials.
The guilty pleas stem from September 2021, when an independent audit was conducted of the inmate commissary funds at the detention center. At the time, Ledford served as captain over the jail.
As a result of the audit, then-sheriff Bobby Deese requested an independent criminal investigation to be conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation.
Ledford was arrested on May 31, 2024, on four counts of felony embezzlement by public official/trustee and four counts of felony access of government computer to defraud.
Attorney Jordan Ford, N.C. chief financial crimes resource prosecutor, was assigned the prosecution of Ledford and negotiated the two felony pleas on Dec. 1.
During his summary of a factual basis for these pleas, Ford told Superior Court Judge Tessa Sellers that these crimes occurred under the prior Clay County sheriff’s administration, that safeguards have since been put in place to prevent future crimes like this from happening and officials with the sheriff’s office cooperated since the discovery of the embezzled funds.
Compiled by Publisher David Brown. The Clay County Progress and Smoky Mountain News contributed to this report.