When Judge Kevin Mullins and Sheriff Shawn Stines, two longtime officials in a rural eastern Kentucky county, were seen getting ready to go to lunch on Thursday, there was no obvious indication of ill will.

But by 3 p.m., Judge Mullins was dead from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Sheriff Stines, known as Mickey to the community, surrendered to the police and is now in a nearby county jail, facing a charge of first-degree murder.

Little is known about why the two men argued or what prompted the gunfire in the district judge’s chambers in the Letcher County courthouse, beyond the initial details that the authorities gave on Thursday evening. But the violence has shaken the county, a tight-knit Appalachian community of about 21,000 people that has been battered in recent years by the demise of the coal industry and a series of devastating floods in 2022.

“We love our neighbors, and we care about each other — we’re all like family, really,” said Mike Watts, the Letcher County Circuit Court clerk, who saw the two men head to lunch before the shooting. “It’s devastating. Everybody’s in shock.”

“I’m grieving for both families,” Mr. Watts added, noting that he was on a separate floor at the time of the shooting. There were, he said, “no words to describe it.”

The courts were indefinitely closed in the small community of Whitesburg, the county seat about 150 miles southeast of Lexington, and flags were lowered to half-staff. Sheriff Stines, 43, remained in the Leslie County Detention Center as of Friday morning as the court system worked to name a special judge to oversee the case, according to Jackie Steele, one of the state prosecutors handling the case.

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