BENTONVILLE -- The Great Cannonball Caper is over.
A city Parks and Recreation employee found the cannonball under a bench on the northeast side of the square early Friday morning, said Gene Page, spokesman for the Bentonville Police Department.
Public Forum Today
A Soldier in Our Midst: Pride for Some, Pain for Others, a public forum about the Confederate statue on the Bentonville square, is scheduled from noon to 2 p.m. today in the Walmart Auditorium in the Shewmaker Center for Workforce Technologies at Northwest Arkansas Community College.
The event is free and open to the public.
Source: Staff Report
The replica cannonball was stolen sometime Monday night from the Confederate soldier monument on the downtown square.
The stolen projectile replaced one taken around 2005 and never found, county officials said. Officials viewed that incident more as a prank since the fountain on the square was filled with soap around the same time. Then-County Judge Gary Black helped raise money for the replacement.
The investigation into the theft will continue, Page said. Police were searching for any camera footage in hopes of seeing who returned the cannonball, he said.
"Hopefully there's something visible," Page said. "The trees around the perimeter play havoc on clear footage."
Bentonville government officials said they have fielded questions and comments about the monument on the square after a brawl broke out between white nationalists and counter protesters in Charlottesville, Va., over removing a Robert E. Lee statue in August.
Bentonville's statue memorializes Confederate soldiers and was placed on the square by agreement between Benton County and the James H. Berry chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908, according to county records.
The group was given the right to "control and occupy" the park for the purpose of maintaining the monument. The chapter became inactive, and the county transferred the authority to beautify and maintain the square to the city in 1996, according to a county court order. The county retained ownership of the square under both arrangements.
NW News on 09/09/2017