A small Kentucky town is still reeling after a longtime sheriff was accused of shooting and killing a judge at the county courthouse on 19 September in an act of shocking violence that has left many questions unanswered.

State police said that the sheriff, Shawn Stines, 43, killed the district judge Kevin Mullins, 54, after an argument in the judge’s chambers. Stines turned himself in, was arrested at the scene and now faces first-degree murder charges.

The motive for the shooting remains unclear, leaving the town of Whiteburg, with a population of 1,711 people, wondering what happened between the two elected officials.

“The community is small in nature, and we’re all shook,” the Kentucky state police trooper Matt Gayheart said at a press conference on the evening of 19 September, after the shooting. “We know that it was an argument between the two that led up [to it] – but exactly what transpired prior to the shots being fired, those are still things we’re trying to get answers to.”

Multiple residents told news outlets that Stines was a beloved longtime member of the community and wondered what led to the outburst. Stines and Mullins had been friends and worked at the county courthouse together for more than a decade.

Stines was recently deposed from a federal investigation involving a former deputy who pleaded guilty to raping and coercing a woman in the courthouse. Ben Fields, the former deputy, was sentenced to six months in jail and nearly seven years probation as part of a plea deal. Fields was fired in 2022 as the allegations were going through court.

The woman at the center of the case, in addition to the estate of a second woman who made similar allegations against Field when she was alive, but has since died, sued Stines for not appropriately investigating the allegations.

A defense attorney for Stines in the lawsuit said that he “at all times acted in good faith and exercised reasonable care and skill in effectuating his duties as required by law”, according to CNN.

On 16 September, three days before the shooting, Stines was deposed in the case, sources told CNN.

Mike Watts, a circuit court clerk, told local TV station WKYT that the sheriff and the judge had lunch together right before the shooting, but police have yet to say what the argument that led to the shooting was about.

People close to Stines said the alleged shooting was out of character and were shocked to hear the accusation that he murdered Mullins.

“You couldn’t find a better person on the face of the earth than Mickey Stines. I don’t know what happened,” Patty Wood, a widow of the district judge who preceded Mullins who was a friend of Stines, told ABC News. “I know [Stines’s] character. And I know there had to be something that did it … I just cannot believe that he just went in and shot him for no reason.”

Bill and Josephine Richardson, a couple who have lived in the town for over 50 years, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that Stines was well liked in the community, and two people they spoke to said that Stines “wasn’t himself” earlier in the week before the shooting.