It’s just so sad. I just hate it,” said Mike Watts, the Letcher County circuit court clerk. “Both of them are friends of mine. I’ve worked with both of them for years.”

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.

Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines, 43, was taken into custody at the scene without incident, police said. He was charged with one count of first-degree murder.