Communities across Kentucky were rocked on Thursday after a courthouse shooting took place in the small town of Whitesburg.

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.

A judge was fatally shot in his chambers by a local sheriff after an argument at a courthouse in Whitesburg, Ky., on Thursday, state police say. District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, was pronounced dead at the scene.

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.

A district judge is dead and a county sheriff has been arrested in connection to a fatal shooting at the Letcher County Courthouse in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

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.

The fatal shooting stunned the tight-knit town of Whitesburg, the county seat, with a population of about 1,700 people, 145 miles southeast of Lexington.

The violence erupted after an argument inside the courthouse, police said. It wasn’t clear what led to the shooting.

Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, was fatally shot in a courthouse at Whitesburg, Kentucky, on Thursday afternoon, according to Kentucky State Police.

Whitesburg is a very small, close-knit community in the Eastern Kentucky mountains and to say the community is in shock would be an understatement.