Police: Political candidate in Eastern Kentucky county shot an acquaintance
A candidate for judge-executive in an Eastern Kentucky county was charged early Tuesday with shooting a man.
Carter Whitaker, 68, a Republican candidate in Magoffin County, was charged with one count of first-degree assault.
One witness, Lorri Prater, said she believed Whitaker had had too much alcohol to drink before the shooting, Dustin Thompson, a Kentucky State Police trooper, said in a citation.
Witnesses said Prater, Whitaker, Terral Sanders and the victim, Christoper Barnett, were together at Whitaker’s house around 3 a.m. when the shooting occurred.
Prater said Whitaker and the other two men often yelled and cursed at each other, but she’d never seen them involved in a physical altercation.
However, Prater said that early Wednesday, Whitaker said he felt Barnett was going to harm him and had gotten a gun, according to the citation.
Prater said “that it was random when Whitaker shot Barnett,” Thompson said in the citation.
Barnett was laying in the floor bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the chest when Thompson arrived, the citation said.
The victim said he didn’t want to talk about what happened. He was taken by ambulance to a hospital and his condition was not available Tuesday afternoon.
Whitaker said he didn’t know what had happened or why, according to the citation.
State police said he was lodged in the Big Sandy Regional Detention Center.
Whitaker was superintendent of Magoffin County schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s, succeeding his father, Herald Whitaker, in the post.
His tenure was marked by allegations of nepotism in hiring, using political influence to punish foes, improper spending and other wrongdoing. He resigned in 1993 after the state Education Department started an effort to remove him.
Whitaker ran unsuccessfully for judge-executive in 2018 as well.
