For Amanda Harrold of Clayton, a mortgage lender who also serves on the city council, being faced with a stalker/peeping tom earlier this year altered her routine and her life – at least temporarily.
The recent kidnapping of Memphis jogger Eliza Fletcher and her subsequent death a few days later is very personal and hit Harrold to the core.
“Basically a few months ago we noticed some suspicious activity around my house at night,” Harrold said.” I called the police chief of the city asked him to come look at it. He did come to the house, reviewed the house, walked around and did say that it looks like I had a peeping Tom. I also noticed when I was running in town that a vehicle, the same vehicle, a couple of times would drive slowly by me, turn around and come back and drive slowly by me again. So, the two things made me very nervous and scared to the point where I stopped running downtown by myself and locked myself up in my house after dark.”
Prior to that, Harrold had not felt concerned about living or running in Clayton.
“And it just it really changed my attitude towards, you know, safety in a small town and everything,” Harrold said. “So that was kind of a situation that I went through.”
Fletcher’s death prompted Harrold to take action, so she purchased 100 pepper sprays for anyone to pick up one free of charge.
“When the most recent murder happened in Tennessee of that mother running early in the morning by herself and was kidnapped and murdered, it really hit home with me,” Harrold said. “And I took it upon myself to purchase 100 pepper sprays. They’re glow-in-the-dark pepper spray for a female to use when they're running downtown. And that's just basically to give them a level of comfort and security because pepper sprays are just not something that are sold in small towns. So, I'm hoping this will help give women the security they need – or an extra level of security – for when they're running downtown. I never want to say like don't run, don't run by yourself, or don't run in the dark or any of that because we should be able to run whenever we want to. It was more about giving them a hopefully a level of security.”
In Clayton, they are available from Harrold at Rabun County Bank.
Asked whether she thinks the stalking/peeping tom incidents could be a result of her face appearing on billboards or her serving on the city council, Harrold said she’s not sure.
“There's some days where I blame it on the billboards and me being an elected official and being blonde and everything, and then there's other days that I think it was just, you know, they saw someone running downtown by herself and they just wanted to know who I was or what I was about or not really sure what it is,” Harrold said. “I hate to try to place the blame on myself or because I do market myself so well for my careers, but I think it was just one of those things where they just saw someone running and they wanted to know more about me is what I'm hoping.”
Harrold said she is sorry that the world is coming to the need for pepper spray for personal protection, but noted it is up to each person to help protect the other.
