Law enforcement response to the shooting death of Jude Kevin Mullins (Kentucky State Police).
“I’ve got an emergency at the courthouse,” said the 911 caller on Sept. 19 in Letcher County, Kentucky. “I need an ambulance here right now.”
The dispatcher asked what happened.
“Judge has been shot,” the caller said.
As previously reported, Shawn Stines, 44, then sheriff of Letcher County, allegedly entered the Letcher County Courthouse in the southeastern city of Whitesburg on the afternoon of Sept. 19. He told others inside that he needed to speak to Judge Kevin Mullins alone, authorities said, according to The Mountain Eagle. The two men entered the judge’s chambers.
Inside, they got into an argument, and Stines shot him several times before surrendering to law enforcement, investigators claim.
An excerpt of the audio and law enforcement response footage is below.
Stines’ legal team is currently working on a defense. Attorney Jeremy Bartley has cited a separate criminal case in which a woman, Sabrina Adkins, claimed to have seen footage in which Mullins was having sex with women in exchange for special treatment.
Adkins, a defendant who was placed on house arrest, filed a federal lawsuit in January 2022 and Stines — a close friend of Mullins’ for roughly three decades — had just been deposed in the ongoing case on Sep. 16, three days before the shooting, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.
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“I seen Judge Mullins having sex with a girl … in the judge’s chambers,” Adkins told police during the investigation into Ben Fields, one of Stines’ former deputies. She claimed to have had sexual relations with Fields once in the office.
