Kentucky Sheriff Arrested After Shooting Judge

In an incident that left one person dead, a Kentucky sheriff was arrested after shooting a judge at the Letcher County Courthouse in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

According to The Mountain Eagle, Letcher County Sheriff Mickey Stines, a Democrat, is accused of shooting District Judge Kevin Mullins, District Judge of the 47th Judicial District, in his office.

Mullins served as the assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Letcher County before being appointed as a district judge by Democrat Governor Steve Beshear in 2009. According to the profile of Mullins for the Cocaine, Meth & Stimulant Summit in November 2022:

Judge Mullins has set forth to implement practices that promote substance use treatment for justice-involved individuals and has successfully helped 971 residents of Letcher County (population 22,000) enter inpatient residential treatment. Likewise, the program developed on August 14, 2018, by Judge Mullins and Matt Brown with Addiction Recovery Care to offer peer support services within the courthouse and courtrooms has been adopted in 50 counties across the Commonwealth helping 16,510 individuals into inpatient residential treatment. Judge Mullins served as a founding member of the Responsive Effort to Support Treatment in Opioid Recovery Efforts (RESTORE) Leadership Team. Judge Mullins’ participation on the RESTORE initiative led to his appointment to the Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health.

Letcher County Central High School in Whitesburg locked down; the school wrote on Facebook:

Parents and Community: After a call from Kentucky State Police, we were ordered to go into a mandatory lockdown because of an active shooting in downtown. Your children are safe. The shooter has been apprehended, but KSP has not released us to come out of lockdown. Your children were never in a concerning situation. Please give us time to work with KSP to figure out our next steps.

The coroner confirmed one person was killed, but did not identify the dead person as Mullins.