Sherri Mitko was 70 years old and lived alone on Lower Line Creek Road in eastern Pulaski County. She had recently lost her husband, leaving her to navigate quiet days in her rural Kentucky neighborhood. That quiet ended around midnight on August 12 when someone forced their way through her front door.
Deputies arrived at the house around 12:10 a.m. to conduct a routine welfare check. What they found inside was a crime scene. Mitko lay dead on the floor, having suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
Word spread fast through the countryside, leaving neighbors shocked that such violence reached a place where people usually leave their doors unlocked. People in the community remembered Mitko as a sweet, quiet woman, making the sudden brutality of her death hard for locals to process.
Detectives with the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigation Division took over the scene right away. Working alongside the coroner’s office, investigators spent the next several days gathering physical evidence and interviewing people along the road to figure out who broke in that night.
By Sunday, August 16, the investigation took a heavy turn when law enforcement identified two teenage boys as the primary suspects. Deputies took both young men into custody and formally charged them with murder.
Sheriff Bobby Jones addressed the community shortly after the arrests to help ease the growing concern across the county. He stressed that the break-in and shooting appeared to be an isolated event, assuring residents that there was no broader threat to public safety.
Even with two suspects behind bars, the grieving process for those who knew Mitko is just starting. Friends and family are left mourning a woman who had already endured deep personal loss, waiting for more answers as the case moves into the court system.
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