Kentucky Sheriff Shawn M. Stines has been charged with murder in the first degree in the fatal shooting of District Judge Kevin Mullins.

A small, tight-knit southeast Kentucky community has been reeling after their sheriff was arrested for the killing of a prominent district judge in his chambers Thursday – spurring residents to wonder what could have triggered the shooting and prompting calls for better courthouse security.

The sheriff charged with murder in the shooting of a rural Kentucky judge in his courthouse chambers was accused in a federal lawsuit of failing to investigate allegations that one of his deputies repeatedly sexually abused a woman in the same judge's chambers.