Kentucky sheriff accused of fatally shooting judge retires
Letcher County Sheriff Mickey Stines (Letcher County)
(NEW YORK) — The Kentucky sheriff accused of fatally shooting a judge in his chambers is retiring, according to a letter from the murder suspect’s attorney.
Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines, 43, was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of Kentucky District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, who authorities said was gunned down inside his chambers in the Letcher County Courthouse on Sept. 19.
Stines “has made the difficult decision” to retire on Monday, attorneys Jeremy Bartley and Kerri Bartley stated in a letter addressed to S. Travis Mayo, deputy counsel at the Kentucky governor’s office.
“This decision is made, not as a result of any ultimatum or in any way as a concession to any allegations made by the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” the letter stated. “Rather, Sheriff Stines has made this decision to allow for a successor to continue to protect his beloved constituents while he addresses the legal process ahead of him.”
Stines pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder charge during his first court appearance last week.
There was no discussion of a bond during the hearing, Lexington ABC affiliate WTVQ-TV reported.
He is expected back in court on Tuesday.
Stines could face the death penalty if convicted, according to a special judge appointed to preside over the case.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear had previously called on Stines to resign in the wake of the incident by Sept. 27. If not, Beshear said there is a “removal process” he can start.
“Every Kentucky county needs an active and working sheriff,” Beshear said at an unrelated press briefing last week. “Right now, Letcher County doesn’t have an active and a working sheriff.”
Mullins was found with multiple gunshot wounds after a 911 caller reported shots being fired inside the courthouse, and Stines was taken into custody without incident at the courthouse, police said.
The shooting allegedly occurred “following an argument inside the courthouse,” according to Kentucky State Police, and investigators are still searching for a motive.
The two had had lunch together the day of the shooting, Letcher County Circuit Clerk Mike Watts told WTVQ.
Days before the shooting, Stines was deposed in a lawsuit, which alleged he had failed to investigate one of his deputies who sexually abused a woman in Mullins’ chambers.
(NEW YORK) — A Georgia sheriff whose office in 2023 investigated an online school shooting threat that led to Colt Gray, the teen now accused of a deadly rampage inside his high school last week, said they “probably” dropped the ball on notifying the suspect’s school district about monitoring him.
Colt Gray, 14, is accused of killing two students and two teachers in Wednesday’s shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, about 45 miles north of Atlanta. Nine others were also injured. Colt Gray had transferred from another school in neighboring Jackson County to Apalachee only two weeks prior, the sheriff’s department in Barrow County told ABC News.
In May of last year, the sheriff’s office in Jackson County investigated an online school shooting threat that the FBI said was traced to Colt Gray. The FBI reached out to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office after Discord users alerted the Bureau about a post threatening a shooting at a middle school in Jefferson, Georgia.
An investigator interviewed Colt Gray and his father about the post at their home on May 21, 2023. The then-13-year-old told the investigator he had a Discord account but had deleted it months earlier and denied making the threats online, according to a transcript of the interview. There was no probable cause for arrest, the FBI said in a statement.
Following the investigation, a former captain in the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office sent a note to the FBI saying that “we have made area schools aware and will monitor this subject,” according to the sheriff’s office. The FBI also said in a statement that Jackson County “alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.”
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said following the school shooting in Barrow County, the FBI alerted her that the suspect was the same teenager her office had investigated last year. Mangum said in a news release on Sept. 6 that after “speaking with Dr. Donna McMullan with the Jefferson City Schools On September 5, 2024, it came to my attention they had no record of being notified of a threat by Colt Gray who was enrolled there.”
The incident raises questions about whether the previous district could have forwarded that information to Barrow County Schools officials once Colt Gray transferred to their district two weeks ago.
Asked by ABC News on Monday whether her office dropped the ball, Mangum said not on the investigation.
“But on notifying the school, probably,” she said, noting that some personnel who worked on the case left the office before the shooting incident last week. “Because I don’t know. If you say area schools are notified, who did you talk to and what school did you talk to? I don’t know.”
Mangum maintained that the 2023 investigation was “done thoroughly” but said she is unable to provide an answer about what happened with the school notification.
“I’m the sheriff. The bottom line is, it falls on me because I am the sheriff,” she continued.
Mangum said Monday her office was looking into emails to see if they could find any records, but at this time they only have the note the former captain sent to the FBI stating that the office did notify schools. She said she has yet to speak to the former captain who sent the note to the FBI and the former investigator who interviewed Colt Gray. She indicated that she didn’t know whether the former captain made phone calls to any area schools instead of leaving a paper trail.
ABC News has reached out to the former captain and investigator for comment.
As for the investigation into the online school shooting threat, Mangum said there wasn’t probable cause for an arrest or to charge the teen with making a terroristic threat.
“As far as the investigation, no, I don’t see anything else that could have been done back then in May of 2023 that he could have done. He did everything he could do at that time with what he had,” Mangum said of the investigator.
She said she believes the 2023 investigation will likely be important for the prosecution regarding the school shooting last week.
Mangum said she is “heartbroken” over the deadly incident.
“My prayers go out to those families that lost their loved ones,” she said. “It hurts me to even think that that could have happened anywhere.”
Colt Gray has been charged as an adult with four counts of felony murder. More charges will be filed, prosecutors said.
His father, Colin Gray, has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children in the second degree, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. He is accused of “knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a weapon,” GBI Director Chris Hosey said last week.
The father and son both made their first court appearances on Friday. Neither has entered a plea and both are set to return to court on Dec. 4.
(NEW YORK) — Sean Combs’ new application for bail should be denied because the music mogul “poses serious risks of danger and obstruction” to his criminal sex trafficking case, federal prosecutors argued in an overnight court filing.
Prosecutors took aim at Combs’ activities from behind bars where, they alleged, “the defendant has, among other things, orchestrated social media campaigns that are, in his own words, aimed at tainting the jury pool; made efforts to publicly leak materials he views as helpful to his case; and contacted witnesses through third parties.”
Prosecutors cited notes from the Combs’ cell that were found during a sweep of the jail. The contents of the notes are redacted but the prosecutors said there is a “strong inference” that Combs paid off an unnamed witness who had posted a statement to Instagram.
The government filing also accused Combs of using the telephone accounts of at least eight other inmates at MDC-Brooklyn “seemingly to avoid law enforcement monitoring” and to make phone calls to people who are not on his approved contact list.
“To obtain or maintain access to other inmates’ [phone access code] numbers, the defendant directs others to pay the inmates, including through payment processing apps and BOP commissary account deposits,” the filing said.
Defense attorneys said new evidence “undermines” the government’s case against Combs but prosecutors said “the defendant offers nothing new and material justifying a third bail hearing” and “rehashes the same arguments” rejected by two other judges.
The “near-total restrictions” Combs offered as part of an enhanced bail package are “woefully insufficient” in keeping him from tainting his upcoming trial, prosecutors said.
“The defendant is a violent, serial abuser who uses his vast wealth and position in the entertainment industry to conceal his illegal conduct and prevent victims of, and witnesses to, his abuse from coming forward,” prosecutors said.
The judge has scheduled a hearing for Friday afternoon. Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and prostitution charges that accused him of using violence, threats and coercion to force women to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes, sometimes lasting days and often recorded. Combs allegedly called the activity “freak offs.”
In arguing for release, Combs argued the video of him attacking his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura actually revealed “a loving, at-times toxic, long-term relationship between two adults who decided mutually to break up.”
Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.
The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.
“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.
The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.
The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.
For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.
Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.
“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”
A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.
While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.
“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”
Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.
If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.
In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.
While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.
“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.
However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.
“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.
The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.
“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.
Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.
“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”
The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.
“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.
ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
