Rowan County, Ky – State police say a Rowan County man is accused of attacking his grandfather with a tomahawk axe at a home in Morehead.​  Troopers say they followed a trail of blood upstairs, where they found the victim, Danny Tackitt, with a broken arm and a large cut to his head, and his wife told officers she saw their grandson, 24-year-old Connor Mullins, hit him with the axe.​  Family members believe Mullins was under the influence of drugs at the time; Tackitt was airlifted to a West Virginia hospital for treatment.

 

Paintsville, Ky – Paintsville Police say a former city resident has been sentenced to eight years in prison on drug trafficking charges.​ Thirty-seven-year-old Sherry Ferguson, now of Clearfield, previously pleaded guilty to trafficking meth, trafficking within 1,000 feet of a school, and having a prescription drug not in its original container.​ In Johnson Circuit Court, she received eight years on the meth charge and additional time on the other counts, all running concurrently, after an investigation by Paintsville Police and the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.

 

Pike County, Ky – A Pikeville man already facing sexual abuse and dating violence charges is now accused of making violent threats over the phone to a law enforcement officer’s wife in Washington state.​ Troopers say 29-year-old Terry Weston Rogers admitted calling the woman while intoxicated, but she reported he said he knew her husband was an officer and threatened to kill her family.​ Rogers is now charged with third-degree terroristic threatening and remains on bond in several earlier Pike County cases, all set for a pretrial hearing in May.

 

Letcher County, Ky – Attorneys for former Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines are asking for a new judge in his murder case.  They’ve filed a motion to have Special Judge Christopher Cohron removed, saying his impartiality could be questioned. The filing points to a Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health meeting held just a week before Judge Kevin Mullins was shot, where Cohron and Mullins were seen sitting inches apart for about two hours, with Mullins’ widow also present. The defense argues that, in a case centered on Stines’ mental health and an insanity defense, that undisclosed connection creates an appearance of bias. A December 18 status hearing was quickly adjourned, and no new date has been set.