Frederick Hopkins, 74, has been charged with murder and six counts of attempted murder in an ambush on South Carolina police officers.
According to CNN, Sgt. Terrence Carraway, a 30-year veteran of the Florence Police Department, was killed after arriving on the scene during the two-hour standoff.
Hopkins was formally charged at noon Friday and denied bond.
Three Florence County sheriff’s deputies went to Hopkins’ house Wednesday to interview Seth Hopkins, Frederick’s 28-year-old adopted son, as part of an investigation into criminal sexual assault. As soon as they stepped out of their vehicle, they were shot without warning.
Seth has also been arrested and charged with second-degree criminal sexual conduct, but nothing more is known about that charge.
“This a very large, complex puzzle that we’re filling the pieces in, piece by piece — what, why and who,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, whose office is conducting the investigation, told reporters Friday afternoon, CNN reports.
There is no clear motive on why the shooting took place.
Per CNN, here is more on Frederick Hopkins:
Frederick Hopkins was disbarred as an attorney in 1984, four years after he got his law license, according to records. He was ordered to pay $18,000 to a court in Lexington County, an amount said to be equal to the sum of “wrongfully collected attorney fees.”
He was charged in 2014 with disorderly conduct, court records show. It is his only known prior arrest.
Hopkins and his wife have nine adopted children, a woman who said she was a longtime friend of the Hopkins family told The State newspaper.
Officials did not provide details about how many children were in the house at the time of the shooting, but Florence County Solicitor EL Clements III told reporters there was a hearing in family court Friday regarding emergency protective custody for the youths.
According to the Associated Press, Hopkins was handy with guns. He was awarded a marksman badge with pistol bar and a sharpshooter with rifle bar decorations during 11 years of U.S. Army service starting in 1966.