WHITESBURG, Ky. >> 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 his 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 following 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 (235 kilometers) 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. 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 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 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 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 Attorney General Russell Coleman said his office will collaborate with a regional commonwealth’s attorney as special prosecutors in the criminal case, since the lead county prosecutor, Matt Butler, recused himself and his office. Butler said he and the judge married two sisters, and their children act like siblings.

“We will fully investigate and pursue justice,” Coleman said on social media.