Man who killed two South Carolina police officers dies in prison

Fred Hopkins, who killed two Florence County officers during a 2018 ambush at his home, died in prison on Saturday.

Hopkins, who was 81, died at 1:17 a.m. at the state Department of Correction’s hospital wing at MUSC Chester, an agency spokeswoman confirmed to News13.

Hopkins in 2023 was sentenced to life in prison on two murder charges for shooting and killing two officers and wounding several others outside his home in the Vintage Place neighborhood more than seven years ago. He was also given 30 years on each of the five attempted murder charges he faced.

He pleaded guilty a week before his sentencing to shooting and killing Florence Police Officer Terrence Carraway and Florence County Sheriff’s Office investigator Farrah Turner, and wounding several other officers. The plea entered in an Aiken County courtroom allowed him to avoid a death sentence, according to 12th Circuit Solicitor Ed Clements.

The incident happened on Oct. 3, 2018, when authorities went to his home off Hoffmeyer Road in Florence to try to serve Hopkins’ son, Seth, who eventually pleaded guilty in December 2019 to a sex charge involving a minor and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Carraway died at the hospital after the shooting, while Turner died on Oct. 22, nearly three weeks after the incident. They were both later inducted into the South Carolina Law Enforcement Officers Hall of Fame.