Letcher Co. residents say judge, sheriff both highly respected

WHITESBURG, Ky. (WJHL) — Three things were abundantly clear when a librarian, a pastor and two construction workers described their small community hours after a local judge had been shot and the county sheriff was jailed in the death.

KSP: Sheriff fatally shot judge in Letcher County, Ky.

One was that Whitesburg and Letcher County are a very small, tight-knit community; another, that residents are still shocked and trying to process the unfathomable; and a third, that Sheriff Mickey Stines and Judge Kevin Mullins both had strong public reputations as positive forces in the community.

"I know Kevin pretty good," Paul Brooks, who, with coworker Chase Stidham, had gathered outside the Letcher County Courthouse once word of a "commotion" there reached the pair about 150 yards down the street, where they were working on a building renovation.

"He's done a lot of good for the community, also with drug court. He does whatever he can to help people, you know, and it's just sad. It really is."

Mullins, 54, died at the scene after being shot multiple times inside the courthouse just before 3 p.m. Thursday.

Stines, 43, a second-term sheriff, surrendered without incident and faces a first-degree murder charge.

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"I didn't believe it," Brooks said when word began spreading that not only was Mullins dead inside his workplace, but that Stines was the killer. "Did not believe it. And then when it came out as being true, you know, it just shocked everybody."

Stidham's reaction was similar. He and Brooks had become curious when they "noticed a lot of commotion out the window."

While walking up the street, they encountered an employee from a bar and grill.

"We was like, 'we don't know what's going on,' and she said, 'the judge has been shot,'" Stidham said.

Then came the second blow.

"We definitely wasn't expecting our sheriff to be the shooter, and when I first heard it, I didn't want to believe it," Stidham said. "I said, 'no, no.'"

Tessa Caudill, programming librarian at the Harry M. Caudill Memorial Library, had just finished story time when her director came in.

"(She) told us there's an active shooter situation next door and that we needed to go into lockdown immediately," Caudill said. "So that's what we did. We just locked down and waited to see what came out."

'Everybody has something good to say about him'

Stines stands accused of murder, but Stidham, Brooks and Caudill all said the man who won re-election to a second term as the county's sheriff in 2022 was seen as a pillar of the community. So did Forgiven Ministries Church pastor Loran Sturgill, who was preparing to help lead a vigil "to come together as a community and lift these families up and just pray for them."

"I know Mickey and his wife pretty good," Brooks said. "They're really good people, you know, really upstanding members of the community."

Stidham agreed.

"The sheriff has done a really great job about cleaning up the drug epidemic we have around here ... keeping it off the streets," Stidham said.

"You walk up to most locals and ask about Mickey, and everybody has something good to say about him."

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Caudill said she had met Stines several times and knew Mullins, who'd been a judge since 2009, by reputation.

"They're both such ... an integral part of our community, that it just shocked me that this happened, especially when we found out who was involved in it and who did the shooting," she said. "It's just it's crazy."

Sturgill said, "Both of the gentlemen are very well-known in the town, and both of them are great guys. I've got the most respect for both of them."

'Everybody knows everybody and everybody's business'

Whitesburg is a town of just over 1,700 people. Letcher County has only 20,000. All four residents said the result is a tight-knit community that tends to pull together in hard times.

"Everybody knows everybody and everybody's business," Caudill said while standing outside the library whose namesake, Harry Caudill, was a Whitesburg native whose oratory and legal career won him national renown.

"We all love each other and support each other."

Stidham echoed the librarian's assessment and said the tragedy has left people grappling with a reality with background details that remain a mystery.

"We're just all at a loss," Stidham said. "We don't know. I don't know. It's baffling to us. We're such a small community; everybody knows each other. You don't expect this."

Sturgill, the pastor, brought up a term for family that is still commonly used in Appalachia.

"Most everyone's kin one way or the other, either through your mother or through your dad," he said. "And when tragedy happens, it hurts the whole town."

Because the community is so small, people acknowledge that when the case moves further along, finding a local jury or even trying it locally may be difficult.

"We see these two individuals every week, and it's just unimaginable," Caudill said. "It's going to be very hard, I think, to stay local with this case just because we're so small that everybody just knows everybody."

Already, Commonwealth's Attorney Matt Butler, who works in the same 47th Judicial District that Mullins served, has announced that his office has recused itself from prosecuting because he and Mullins were married to a pair of sisters.

Caudill and Sturgill both referred to the positive aspects of Letcher County's close-knit nature, mentioning the community's response when devastating and deadly floods swept Eastern Kentucky in 2022.

"That's a beautiful thing and a wonderful thing because we do support each other so much," Caudill said. "It's just a different dynamic this time, I suppose."

Sturgill said he was hopeful the community wouldn't divide over the events that will continue stirring strong emotions in the coming weeks.

"The two families that are involved ... are amazing families, and our hearts go out to both families," he said. "We want to come together as a community and lift these families up and just pray for them."

More prayer, fewer rumors

Various rumors, some of them objectively shocking, hit the internet quickly on Thursday. Each of the people that News Channel 11 spoke to said they hoped that type of speculation would abate soon so the justice system could complete its work.

"Everything online started going crazy," Brooks said. "You know, rumors spreading. It was just a bad deal."

His work partner, Stidham, said there had been too much speculation.

"These people have families, and I don't think that's fair to them as of right now," Stidham said. "I agree with everybody we just need to pray as a community and I guess we'll see what happens."

"I think that people just need to let the authorities handle it ... it's not up to us to judge what happened there."

Caudill said she thinks if people begin to take sides, even online, "that would be the worst thing that could happen. We don't know all of the information and so we don't need to jump to conclusions."

Caudill hopes that instead, the community reacts like it did to the flooding.

"People came together in this community unlike any in any other time that I've ever seen," she said. "I think that we're going to have to do it again in order to help each other through and just to pray for each other and lift each other up, not to spread hate. That's the opposite of what we need."

With a prayer vigil hours away, Sturgill spoke of a need for grace that extends far beyond this isolated, struggling Appalachian town and county.

"We're going to have a prayer vigil for the families, for our town, for our county, for our state, for our country. In my opinion, we're living in our last days, and we need to be ready. And that requires loving one another."