The question haunting a Kentucky town: Why would the sheriff shoot the judge?

WHITESBURG, Ky. – They’d been friends for years and once worked side-by-side in the county courthouse . They were two high-profile elected officials in a town where it seems like everybody knows each other.

So why, as he’s accused in court, did Letcher County Sheriff Shawn "Mickey" Stines walk into a private room inside the courthouse, pull out a gun and kill District Judge Kevin Mullins ?

It’s an unprecedented crime in a town that can go years without a homicide. And the Thursday afternoon shooting left a gaping hole in the judicial system – Mullins was the county’s only judge , and its sheriff is behind bars in Leslie County, facing a first-degree murder charge after he surrendered on the scene.

With a population in 2020 of just under 1,800 people, Whitesburg is tight-knit. Letcher County Commonwealth’s Attorney Matt Butler recused himself from the case due largely to family ties with the judge. The two were once married to a pair of sisters, and Butler said his two daughters called Mullins “unkie.”

And in that tight-knit community, Butler knows rumors spread like wildfire. In a video he posted Friday morning on social media , he told viewers he “would not be a source of gossip” and asked those in the region, many of whom have his cellphone number, to do the same.

“If you are only looking to gossip or to be a troublemaker or a stirrer-up of gossip, leave me out of that conversation and just don't have that conversation,” Butler said. “Be more respectful.”

No motive has been publicly identified. Kentucky State Police didn’t provide one in the immediate aftermath of the shooting , which took place just before 3 p.m. Thursday. Nor did police host a news conference Friday. Stines' first court appearance will likely take place next week and the three-sentence arrest citation offered few details. As of Saturday morning, Stines had not named an attorney who might speak for him.

In the meantime, Whitesburg, Letcher County and the rest of the region have been left only to speculate.

Mullins had no public discipline history from the Kentucky Bar Association and had a reputation in the community of working with drug offenders to get them into treatment facilities instead of jails.

Stines, meanwhile, had friends all over town. He’d been a fixture in the community for decades, working for years as bailiff in Mullins’ court before winning the race for sheriff in 2018. He had no plans to seek another term, he had said earlier this year.

Patty Wood, a legal assistant at a law office down the street from the courthouse, said her husband, former District Judge James Wood, “took (Stines) under his wing” while the sheriff was still a bailiff in his courtroom more than 15 years ago. If she saw Stines 10 times in a day, she said, “there was always a hug.”

“He would always say, ‘Do you need anything? If you need anything, call me,’” Patty Wood said. “Literally, no matter how many times I’d see him in a day, it was always a hug, it was always those specific words that he would say.”

She was at the law office when she heard about a shooting at the courthouse Thursday. She walked with attorney Jennifer Taylor to the scene, she said, where a crowd of stunned witnesses and onlookers had gathered.

“They said Kevin had been shot and Mickey shot him, and at that point, my heart had dropped,” Wood said. “That was the last thing that you could even think of happening.”

In Wood’s mind, it just doesn’t add up. And she isn’t the only one with questions.

Bill and Josephine Richardson have lived in Whitesburg since they helped found the Appalshop art center in 1969. The Richardsons had met both men but were closer with Stines. He was well-liked, Josephine Richardson said, and had pushed this year for a petition to allow alcohol sales throughout the county to add to its coffers, assuring residents he wouldn’t benefit financially because he wasn’t running for reelection.

The Richardsons said two people they’d spoken to said Stines “wasn’t himself” earlier this week.

They’ve witnessed a lot, but they haven’t witnessed a scene like the one that unfolded Thursday. Their son, who lives in Somerset, called Josephine Richardson minutes after the shooting, she said, and warned his parents not to go downtown.

The area was packed with police, ambulances and onlookers and the nearby high school was on lockdown. A contingent of media swarmed the town, including reporters with LEX-18 and The New York Times .

Laci Wright, who works at nearby Coal City Coffee, watched the scene unfold.

“Three ambulances drove by, and then you saw fire trucks, and the police cars, cop cars and all that stuff. It backed all the way up (to the end of the street),” she said.

The sheriff is a defendant in a different ongoing federal lawsuit and was deposed Monday for several hours. He has been accused of failing to train and supervise a deputy sheriff who traded favorable treatment for a woman on house arrest who didn’t want to return to the Letcher County jail in exchange for sexual favors in Mullins’ chambers, where there were no cameras at that time.

That deputy, Ben Fields, was fired and later convicted of several state charges, spending less than a year in jail before being released this summer on probation. Stines was not accused of trading favors for sex, and Mullins was not charged or accused of wrongdoing.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in that case told The Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, they were surprised by the shooting and are not sure whether the case played a role in Thursday’s chaos.

“Everyone has different perspectives,” Josephine Richardson said.

Jackie Steele, Commonwealth's Attorney for nearby Perry County and several other Eastern Kentucky jurisdictions, will take up the case alongside Attorney General Russell Coleman in place of the Letcher County Commonwealth's Attorney. Butler praised Steele in his social media post, calling him "maybe the most competent prosecutor in the Commonwealth of Kentucky."

Wood remains close to Stines' family and saw his wife and daughter Friday. They're a "good family," she said, but right now, "they're not good."

Wood is among many in Letcher County and beyond who are waiting for clarity.

In the meantime, Butler said in the video he posted, rumors can only complicate a situation that is getting more frenzied by the minute.

"This is not the time to gossip. This is not the time to trash people," he told viewers. "We are going to do anything we can to help each other. We are going to be respectful of each other while we grieve, and we are going to do things to make our county safer and make sure this does not happen again."

Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: The question haunting a Kentucky town: Why would the sheriff shoot the judge?