Members of the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners still have questions about what kind of animal killed Pungo Christian Academy teacher Brenda Hamilton in an early-morning attack in February.

On Monday, Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Charlie Rose spoke before the group during its monthly meeting to try and answer some of those unresolved questions.

“Once we actually got the lab results back, there were some domestic canine markers in the DNA, but there wasn’t anything else that was found, so it’s not like you can preclude or say that the animal that was involved in the attack was not a wolf or was not coyote or was not a hybrid,” Rose said.

As a caveat to that statement, Rose added that the agency was intentional about the information it released during the investigation, following the evidence and refusing to venture into the realm of speculation.

“We know that there are a lot of things that are unknown, and we try to answer as many of those questions, but we’re also mindful that if we didn’t know the answer, we weren’t going to guess, and we weren’t going to speculate,” the chief deputy added.

Rose, during the meeting, also shared a number of factors that complicated the investigation, including a lack of DNA evidence at the scene and the immediacy of trying to save Hamilton’s life.

“There were a lot of factors that would go against being able to develop forensic evidence,” Rose said. “One of those was the water. The scene area that we were in was muddy and there was water in a lot of different places. The scene was not conducive to getting latent evidence.”

Two commissioners, Frankie Waters and Hood Richardson, both shared concerns about the inconclusive results of the investigation, and suggested additional steps moving forward.

Richardson during the meeting requested copies of the report from Western Carolina and suggested that based on the conclusions of the DNA testing, further testing at another laboratory might be the next step.

“The other opportunity is to invite U.S. Fish and Wildlife and state wildlife officials to come to a commissioners’ meeting and make a presentation and answer some questions,” Richardson said in an interview Friday. “I would be asking them to explain to us why this is not a red wolf or coyote.”

Waters said he believed U.S. Fish and Wildlife could provide information from tracking collars that might help rule out red wolves as being responsible for the attack. Overall, Waters said there needs to be better management of the local wild canine populations.

“What I think the U.S. Fish and Wildlife owes the local community is to show us how close the red wolves were to the attack that morning,” Waters said Friday. “What that does is take that part out of the equation … then we’re down to a pack of coyotes or hybrids.”

For both Waters and Richardson, the issue presents a public safety concern.

“If it’s happened once, it can happen again,” Richardson added. “That’s my big concern. I’ve got surveyors who get out into some deep, dark woods, so do we need to be alert? Not that I have a special personal interest in this any more than the public, but anybody that’s out, even if they’re hunting and have a high-powered rifle, they can still be overtaken by wild animals.”

“I’ve had conversations with the Sheriff’s Office, and I really feel like the morning that it happened and ever since, they’ve done their job,” Waters added. “The first responders did an excellent job. To me, it’s a process of elimination. It’s not an easy thing to come up with, but I think the concern should be from everybody in eastern North Carolina, how do we keep this from happening again?”