Residents of a tiny Appalachian town on Friday struggled to cope with a shooting involving two of its most prominent citizens: a judge who was gunned down in his courthouse chambers and a local sheriff charged with his murder.
“It’s just so sad. I just hate it,” Letcher County Circuit Court Clerk Mike Watts said. “Both of them are friends of mine. I’ve worked with both of them for years.”
It was not clear what led to the shooting. The preliminary investigation indicates that Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines shot District Judge Kevin Mullins multiple times following an argument inside the courthouse, Kentucky State Police said.
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Mullins, 54, who held the judgeship for 15 years, died at the scene, and Stines, 43, surrendered without incident. He was charged with one count of first-degree murder.
The fatal shooting stunned the tight-knit town of Whitesburg, the county seat, with a population of about 1,700 people.
Stines was deposed on Monday in a lawsuit filed by two women, one of whom alleged that a deputy forced her to have sex inside Mullins’ chambers for six months in exchange for staying out of jail. The lawsuit accuses the sheriff of “deliberate indifference in failing to adequately train and supervise” the deputy.
The now-former deputy sheriff, Ben Fields, pleaded guilty to raping the female prisoner while she was on home incarceration. Fields was sentenced this year to six months in jail and then six-and-a-half years on probation for rape, sodomy, perjury and tampering with a prisoner monitoring device, the Mountain Eagle reported.
Three charges related to a second woman were dismissed because she has since died.
Stines fired Fields, who succeeded him as Mullins’ bailiff, for “conduct unbecoming” after the lawsuit was filed in 2022, the Courier Journal reported at the time.
Watts said he saw Mullins and Stines together shortly before noon on Thursday — about three hours before the shooting — when he went into the judge’s chambers to ask him to sign some papers.
Mullins and Stines were getting ready to go out to lunch together, Watts said.
It seemed like an ordinary interaction, except that Stines appeared quieter than usual.
Watts said he thought the pair had a good working relationship and knew of nothing that could have prompted the violent encounter.
Watts, who was on another floor in the courthouse, never heard any shots and only learned of the shooting when his son called to tell him about an “active shooter” in the courthouse.
Those who know both the sheriff and the judge had nothing but praise for them, recalling how Mullins helped people with substance abuse disorder get treatment and how Stines led efforts to combat the opioid crisis. They worked together for years and were friends.
Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter was in Whitesburg on Friday and said he was visiting to show his support for the community.
“They are obviously in shock and grieving,” he said.
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