Leatherwood, Kentucky

From Lexington’s Kentucky.com of March 11, 2006

CONVICTED FELON SHOT, KILLED BY SON

A Perry County man was shot to death yesterday as he and two sons exchanged gunfire across a creek at Leatherwood, chief deputy sheriff Randal Poff said. The victim, Zendell Ray Adams, 44, of Slemp, was shot once through the neck, but no one was arrested because both sons apparently returned fire with .30-caliber rifles, Poff said. One son, William J. Hensley, 24, was arrested on an outstanding Leslie County warrant, but Tony Allen Hensley, 18, was not taken into custody. The case will be presented to a Perry County grand jury, he said. The shootout resulted from a domestic dispute between Adams, a convicted felon, and the mother of his six children, whom he never married, Poff said. Earlier in the day, Adams used a baseball bat to attack a van in which the sons were riding, he said. The sons retreated to an in-law's home across the creek from a Leatherwood liquor store before Adams arrived and opened fire on the house with a shotgun. Witnesses said the sons returned fire, according to Poff, who added that Adams also was the father of five other children with another woman. The victim was pronounced dead in the liquor store parking lot, he said.