Late yesterday morning, a masked gunman arrived at Pinecrest Library with a shotgun and opened fire at the office of head librarian Kayla Reardon. Fortunately, Mrs. Reardon spotted the gunman seconds before the first blast smashed apart her office wall. She was able to retrieve the shotgun kept under her desk and fired back at the gunman, narrowly missing him as he fled the scene.

“I didn’t see his face, but I didn’t need to,” Mrs. Reardon told the Gazette. “I’d recognize that terrible marksmanship anywhere. It was Blake Carlisle.”

Mr. Carlisle is the head librarian at the Emerson Valley Public Library, which has often found itself at odds with Pinecrest Library over the patronage of the town’s residents. When asked to comment on Mrs. Reardon’s accusations, Mr. Carlisle had this to say:

“She thinks I took a shot at her? That’s crazy! If I shot at her, she wouldn’t have been in any condition to accuse me of anything, know what I mean?”

When asked why she believed Mr. Carlisle was the masked gunman, Mrs. Reardon said, “He’s upset that shortly after he announced his library was doing a mobile unit, we announced ours. And since we’re the library the people of Emerson Valley trust, we were able to afford a nicer truck than they could. It’s pure jealousy. But if he comes back? He won’t take me by surprise again.”

Shockingly, this isn’t the first instance of gunfire erupting as a result of the feud. In 2016, Blake Carlisle was shot in the shoulder by the previous head librarian of Pinecrest Library, Henry J. Porter. Mr. Porter was later found dead beneath the reference section of his library, his throat having been slit with a sharpened bookmark.

“If Carlisle thinks he can take me out as easily as he did Hank, he’s got another thing coming,” Mrs. Reardon said as she barricaded her office with stacks of encyclopedias. “This is Pinecrest Library. We play to win.”

-Sarah Donovan, Editor & Local News, Emerson Valley Gazette