Brothers get 10 years on weapons charges

PORTLAND – Two brothers who admitted to fatally shooting a New Hampshire man during a botched robbery in Yarmouth have been sentenced to 10 years apiece on unrelated federal weapons charges and will be sentenced this week in state court for the killing.

Ryan Hopkins, 23, and Shawn Hopkins, 28, appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court, where they pleaded guilty in May to possessing a sawed-off shotgun that Maine State Police found in their car at the time of their arrests a year earlier.

The two are scheduled to be sentenced Friday in Kennebec County Superior Court for the May 17, 2004, murder of Julius Petrovic of Bretton Woods, N.H. The 60-year-old maitre d’ at Spruce Point Inn in Boothbay Harbor was shot in broad daylight through the window of his parked sport utility vehicle in the parking lot of a rest area off Interstate 295.

The Hopkins brothers initially pleaded innocent to the state charges but changed their pleas last May.

The brothers, identified by police as drug abusers with lengthy criminal records, were allegedly trying to rob Petrovic when Ryan Hopkins shot him in the chest with a .40-caliber Glock pistol.

Ryan Hopkins pleaded guilty to murder and robbery. Under an agreement with prosecutors, he faces a 42-year prison term for murder and a concurrent 40-year term for robbery.

Shawn Hopkins, the driver of the getaway car, stands to receive 30 years for felony murder and a concurrent 20 years for robbery, according to the prosecution.

The two were arrested five days after the shooting while driving along the Maine Turnpike in Cumberland. Police said that Ryan Hopkins had told his estranged wife and two others before his arrest that he was the triggerman in the shooting.