Estimated 129 guns found in home of police-ambush suspect

Associated Press

Authorities found approximately 130 guns inside the South Carolina home of a man who set up his house in an upscale neighborhood to ambush police officers coming to question his son about a possible child sex assault, the sheriff investigating the case said Tuesday.

Frederick Hopkins only fired three of the guns Oct. 3 – a pistol and two military assault rifles, said Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, who first put the total number of guns in the home at 129, then said it was still an approximation.

One officer was killed and six more wounded. Two Florence County deputies remain in critical condition and a third is also still in the hospital, Lott said.

“It’s chilling to see how this house was set up,” Lott said. “The officers had no chance whatsoever.”

Lott said it was fortunate more officers weren’t killed or wounded, but did not go into specifics about what Hopkins allegedly did to plan for the ambush before the arrival of three female deputies from the Florence County Sheriff’s Office at his home. The deputies were there to serve a search warrant and have a prearranged interview with his 28-year-old son, Seth Hopkins.

All three were shot as they got out of their vehicle. Frederick Hopkins, 74, would fire 39 shots total, Lott said, citing a 13-day search of a six-block crime scene around Hopkins’ 6,500-square-foot home. The search was helped by a special FBI team that collected evidence in the fatal shootings of five police officers in Dallas in 2016 and deaths of 59 people and wounding of hundreds more at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas last year.

Four police officers from the city of Florence were wounded as they tried to save the deputies.