FALMOUTH, Ky. – At the center of a feud between this Northern Kentucky’s city council and its impeached and recently arrested former mayor stands a stolen sheep.
Like Cincinnati’s fascination with its Flying Pigs, Falmouth is home to a handful of painted sheep statues. It’s intended to line up with the small Pendleton County town’s long-running wool festival, bringing the community together around a shared heritage.
But after one of these statues was stolen and later recovered, it has divided the town into two factions. Residents, business owners and the county-wide community have found themselves choosing sides.
As a whole, Falmouth’s small-town politics are far from easy-going. Over the last decade alone, two of its four mayors were impeached, and another recently resigned.
Falmouth’s instability can be traced back to the flood of 1997, when the Licking River’s flash flooding killed five people, destroyed nearly all of the town and forced half of its roughly 2,000 residents to evacuate. Many never returned.
Nearly three decades later, after the Licking River flooded again earlier this month, the sheep of the hour — patriotically donning red, white and blue — was installed outside City Hall for all to see.
The burning question: whose sheep is it?
The “We the People” painted sheep, recently stolen and recovered, is one of a handful designed to attract visitors to Falmouth, Kentucky, and recognize its history of wool production.
A late-night sheep heist
About 2 a.m. in the summer of 2023, Falmouth’s local watering hole was closing up for the night.
Two men are seen on surveillance footage walking out of The Smoking Pig Tavern and approach the sheep statue, goofing around. They walk back into the bar, talk inside for a few minutes and then head back toward the sheep.
Then, all of a sudden, it was gone, Falmouth police detective Ken Hall said.
Hall said the men loaded the roughly 150-pound sheep into a truck bed and took off. A year later, it was found two hours south in Corbin, Kentucky, at the residence of one of the men, Chad McKenzie. The other man still hasn’t been identified.
After it was recovered, the sheep statue was stored in the basement of the police department as the court case unfolded, Hall said.
The sheep statue was stored in the basement while the case against its alleged thief unfolded. When the Licking River flooded in early April, it became surrounded by water.
By the time the Licking River flooded in Falmouth earlier this month, McKenzie had already pleaded guilty and paid the city a small fine to avoid jail time. The sheep was surrounded by flood waters in the basement, so during the clean-up effort, officials placed it back in front of City Hall.
The next day, former Falmouth mayor Sebastian Ernst went to the police department to claim his sheep.
Kicked off the farm
Ernst, a longtimer who served as mayor for two years before his impeachment in 2024, says he never saw the inside of a jail cell before last Monday night.
Earlier that day, Police Chief Marty Hart banned Ernst from all city property after an argument at the police department over who owns the once-stolen sheep. Ernst claims it’s his statue – he says he bought it when he bought the pizza parlor that once housed it – but Hart says it belongs to city councilwoman Joyce Carson.
That night, Ernst was arrested at a city council meeting one of the councilmen had invited him to attend.
Former Falmouth mayor Sebastian Ernst, right, and his wife. Ernst was recently arrested amid a dispute over who owns a painted sheep statue.
Councilman Craig Owen said City Council was meeting to appoint a new mayor after the predecessor’s resignation a day after flood waters cleared. Seeing he had the support of the community, Owen wanted to vouch for Ernst and invited him to attend.
But when Hart saw Ernst was at the meeting, he called for backup, according to an arrest report.
A Falmouth patrolman told Ernst he had to leave, but he refused, saying it was an unlawful order and asking for the city and county attorneys to intervene.
When reached by phone that night, both attorneys said they would not pursue criminal charges because city council meetings are public and Ernst cannot be banned from them. Hart disagreed and instructed the officer to go ahead and arrest Ernst anyway, the police report says.
Hart declined to comment for this article, referring all inquiries to the city. City officials, including current Mayor Sabrina Hazen, declined multiple in-person requests to comment.
After Ernst’s arrest, the city said in a statement he was being “disorderly and offensive,” and his request for the sheep escalated into threats toward city officials. In a clip of the conversation Ernst taped, which was reviewed by The Enquirer, Hart and Ernst go back and forth about who owns the sheep, but no threats were made. Ernst later said the only threat he made was that he would fire the police chief once he becomes mayor again.
More: A day after flooding forced evacuations in NKY city, its mayor resigns to take another job
“Why would I go in there and stand and yell at them? That’d just give them more ammunition,” Ernst said. “That’s what they want.”
The charge against Ernst isn’t expected to stick. Pendleton County Attorney Stacey Sanning said she plans to drop the trespassing charge, writing in a Facebook statement that members of the public have a “virtually unconditional right” to attend city meetings.
Still, the arrest has had some fallout.
Falmouth is the county seat of Pendleton County, roughly an hour south of Downtown Cincinnati in Northern Kentucky.
City attorney Brandon Voelker resigned in the wake of the incident, and Sanning made a point to distance herself from the politics of it all.
“Just because I dismiss a charge does NOT mean that the police had no probable cause to arrest him or that it was an unlawful arrest,” Sanning wrote. “Chief Hart has built a team of officers at the Falmouth Police Department that I believe is the best we have had in decades.”
Jennifer Larabee, owner of the Mystery Box general store downtown, said the whole dispute is affecting business. All of the “drama” has people choosing sides − people who like Ernst won’t patronize businesses siding with the city, and vice-versa, she said.
To Ernst, over the past few decades since the flood of 1997, this is just the latest spat.
What’s next for Falmouth?
When there isn’t a sheep missing or small-town politics at play, Falmouth is quiet. Its two-stoplight downtown has the typical staples — a tavern, an antique store and a coffee shop. Several buildings, mostly historic, are vacant.
Ernst’s family is piece-by-piece buying up downtown in an attempt to bring the city back to life. Ernst is working to reopen an old theater and an ice cream shop, he said. A Marine Corps veteran, he recently opened a pizza parlor matching his patriotic branding.
Ernst admitted he’s using this latest arrest as a catalyst to reclaim the mayor’s office, but says he has been targeted by the city council ever since he first entered Falmouth’s politics. He says everyone has a “defeatist” attitude and has accepted that Falmouth won’t be what it was before the flood, except for him.
Shelby and Main Street in Falmouth, Kentucky.
Still, that hasn’t deterred Ernst.
“It’s like a kid leaving Chuck E. Cheese,” he said. “You can kick, yell and scream all you want, but we’re going home.”
City leaders, like interim clerk and treasurer Ramona Williams, say they’re just trying to move on past the drama for a better Falmouth.
“We’re all just looking to keep our heads above water and charge forward with the people we’ve got,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Stolen sheep the focus of feud with an impeached Kentucky mayor