Tiny Kentucky town is rocked as its sheriff is jailed in the killing of a judge

Residents of a tiny Appalachian town struggled Friday 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 murder.

“It’s just so sad. I just hate it,” said Mike Watts, the Letcher County circuit court clerk. “Both of them are friends of mine. I’ve worked with both of them for years.”

The preliminary investigation indicates Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines shot District Judge Kevin Mullins multiple times after an argument inside the courthouse, according to Kentucky State Police.

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, 145 miles southeast of Lexington.

Watts said he saw Mullins and Stines together shortly before noon 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 seemed 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. Stines had been a bailiff in Mullins’ courtroom for years before becoming sheriff, Watts said.

Watts, who was on another floor in the courthouse, never heard shots and only learned of the shooting when his son called to tell him there was an “active shooter” in the courthouse.

A key question is what may have led to the shooting.

Stines was deposed 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 under home incarceration. Fields was sentenced this year to six months in jail and then 6½ years 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 is now dead.

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.

Kentucky Atty. Gen. Russell Coleman said his office will collaborate with a commonwealth’s attorney in the region as special prosecutors in the criminal case. “We will fully investigate and pursue justice,” Coleman said on social media.

Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter said that he was “shocked by this act of violence” and that the court system was “shaken by this news.”

Jessica Slone, a distant relative of Stines and a lifelong resident of Letcher County, said she was shocked when she heard the news. She was at the dollar store with her nephew when he told her Mullins had been shot.

“I was like, ‘Seriously? Is he OK?’ And he said ‘No, he’s dead,’” she said. “But at the time, I didn’t know that Mickey had done it. When I found out I was grocery shopping, and I got really emotional and started praying.”

She described Stines as a family man who is close with his children and worked hard to get fentanyl and methamphetamine off the streets of the community and help people dealing with substance-use disorder get into recovery.

Letcher County’s judge-executive closed the county courthouse Friday.

It was unclear whether Stines had an attorney. State police referred inquires to a spokesperson who did not immediately respond by email.

Mullins served as a district judge in Letcher County since he was appointed by then-Gov. Steve Beshear in 2009 and elected the next year.

Schreiner and Lovan write for the Associated Press.