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AIKEN, S.C. (AP) — A 79-year-old South Carolina man prevented a potential loss of life sentence Thursday by agreeing to plead responsible to ambushing police officers coming to his residence, killing two of the officers and wounding 5 others.
Frederick Hopkins court docket look was unannounced and reporters following the extensively publicized case weren’t within the courtroom in Aiken County, some 120 miles (169 kilometers) from the place the October 2018 assault came about.
Hopkins was charged with two counts of homicide and 5 counts of tried homicide.
Hopkins can be sentenced later, however his lawyer Boyd Younger advised media shops after the listening to that prosecutors agreed to take the loss of life penalty off the desk. Hopkins would face 30 years to life in jail for homicide.
Three Florence County deputies advised Hopkins they had been coming to his residence in an upscale subdivision to execute a search warrant towards his son for potential sexual abuse costs.
Hopkins, a adorned Vietnam Struggle veteran, armed himself in a upstairs window and fired at the deputies as they bought out of their automobile. He stored capturing as extra officers rushed to the scene to avoid wasting their comrades.
So many rounds had been fired with such highly effective weapons that it took as much as half-hour to get an armored car shut sufficient to rescue the wounded officers. He used three firearms within the ambush, and greater than 100 weapons had been present in his residence.
Florence Police Sgt. Terrence Carraway died the day of the capturing and Florence County Sheriff’s deputy Farrah Turner died practically three weeks later from her wounds.
The son, 33-year-old Seth Hopkins, pleaded responsible in 2019 to second-degree legal sexual conduct with a minor and is serving 20 years in jail.
Frederick Hopkins’ attorneys, prosecutors and the decide have stored a lot of the case away from reporters. In June, all of them agreed to shut the courtroom from the media and the general public throughout pre-trial hearings and stored all motions and data off South Carolina’s public court docket data website.
When cameras have been at Hopkins hearings, his habits has been erratic. A disbarred lawyer, Hopkins referred to as prosecutor Ed Clements “Fats Eddie” a number of instances during a hearing the place the prosecution introduced they might search the loss of life penalty and Hopkins didn’t have a lawyer current.
In a later listening to, Hopkins was in a wheelchair and had a tool to assist him hear the proceedings.
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