Austin David Thompson was a fifteen year old living in North Carolina when he would murder five people during a mass shooting
According to court documents fifteen year old Austin David Thompson was heavily armed when he began walking around his neighborhood firing. Nicole Connors, 52, Gabriel Torres, 29, Mary Marshall, 34, and Susan Karnatz, 49.
When Austin David Thompson was taken into custody police would search his home where they would find his brother who had been stabbed multiple times and shot.
Austin David Thompson would ultimately plead guilty to five counts of murder. He would be sentenced to life without parole
Austin David Thompson Case
An 18-year-old pleaded guilty Wednesday to murder and other charges for a mass shooting in North Carolina, acknowledging that he carried out a 2022 killing rampage that left five people dead, including his older brother and a police officer.
Austin David Thompson, who was 15 at the time of the attack that authorities say began in his Raleigh neighborhood, had been poised to go on trial in state court in less than two weeks.
Instead, Thompson’s attorneys, who for months had filed pretrial motions designed to limit certain testimony and evidence, announced Tuesday that he planned to plead guilty to all charges against him. His attorneys wrote that avoiding a trial would “save the community and the victims from as much additional infliction of trauma as possible.”
Thompson, wearing a quarter-zip sweater and slacks, offered few words while Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway questioned him and accepted his pleas. He pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of assault of an officer with a gun.
Ridgeway set a sentencing hearing for Feb. 2, which could last several days as testimony and evidence are reviewed. Thompson and his attorney acknowledged in court that no plea agreement had been reached with local prosecutors.
Because of his age at the time of the attack, Thompson can’t receive the death penalty. A judge can issue sentences of life in prison without parole on such murder counts. Ridgeway instead could sentence him in the case so he could be eligible for parole after at least 25 years. State appeals judges recently placed a 40-year limit on how long such young offenders must serve before becoming eligible for parole.
Resolution in the case was delayed in part while Thompson recovered from a gunshot wound that Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman concluded earlier was self-inflicted before his arrest. His attorneys say it resulted in a serious brain injury.
Providing the court a summary of evidence that would have been used at trial, Assistant District Attorney Patrick Latour described the sequence of events during the Oct. 13, 2022, shootings. He said Thompson first shot then repeatedly stabbed his brother James, whose body was found in the family’s home in the Hedingham community.
Latour said Thompson, armed with a shotgun and handgun, next shot multiple neighbors on the community’s streets, killing Nicole Connors, 52, and then off-duty Raleigh police Officer Gabriel Torres, 29. Another neighbor who was wounded survived. Later, Thompson fatally shot two others on a nearby greenway trail: Mary Marshall, 34, and Susan Karnatz, 49.
Dressed in camouflage and carrying a backpack, Thompson was located by law enforcement in a shed nearby and arrested after an hourslong standoff during which he wounded another police officer, Latour said.
Wednesday’s hearing provided little additional explanation about Austin’s motive. His attorneys wrote this week that the brain injury “has made it such that Austin cannot explain why he committed this shooting.”
Latour said a note written by Thompson acknowledged why he killed his brother but that information wasn’t provided Wednesday. The note was ordered to remain confidential for now. Latour also said records showing Thompson’s online search history revealed that he had sought information on mass shootings and related items. A Thompson attorney said the report with those records may be challenged at sentencing.
Robert Steele, Marshall’s fiance at the time of her death, told reporters after the hearing that sentencing Thompson to life in prison without parole is the right thing to do.
“That’s justice,” Steele said. “He took five people’s lives, he tried to take two others.”
In 2024, Thompson’s father pleaded guilty to improperly storing his handgun that authorities said was found when his son was arrested. He received a suspended sentence and probation.
Investigators seized 11 firearms and 160 boxes of ammunition — some of them empty — from the Thompson home, according to search warrants. Austin Thompson and his family were avid hunters, Latour said.
Teen pleads guilty to North Carolina mass shooting that killed 5 – ABC News
Austin Thompson Sentencing
Austin Thompson, the North Carolina teenager convicted of killing his brother and four neighbors in a 2022 rampage, was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Thompson, who did not speak publicly in court, was led away in handcuffs after the sentencing. Family members of the shooting victims cried as the sentence was handed down. Thompson’s attorneys announced plans to appeal the sentence.
Thompson pleaded guilty on Jan. 21 to five counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a law enforcement officer in connection with the Oct. 13, 2022, stabbing and shooting spree.
Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway had the option to sentence him to life in prison with the chance for parole after at least 25 years. Thompson did not face the death penalty given his age at the time of the crimes.
Ridgeway said during the sentencing that Thompson is “the rare juvenile defendant whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.”
According to a court filing, Thompson, now 18, chose to plead guilty “to save the community and the victims from as much additional infliction of trauma as possible” and spare them a trial.
Thompson’s parents and family members of the victims addressed the court during the sentencing, often breaking down in tears as they recounted what happened.
“We lost both of our children in one afternoon,” Thompson’s mother, Elise Thompson, said, before reading a letter she wrote.
In the letter, she said she can’t make sense of what happened.
“My heart is shattered. We have nothing left to look forward to,” she said, crying.
Court documents say that Thompson, then 15, armed himself with a .22-caliber rifle from his Raleigh home and shot his 16-year-old brother James Thompson in the head. The pair had returned home from school and had been playing video games.
James survived the shot, but died after Thompson took a knife and stabbed him 57 times. Prosecutors said that Thompson then collected additional firearms and “hundreds of rounds of ammunition of various calibers” from around the home, changed from his school clothes into “full camouflage gear” and packed a large backpack with prepackaged food, water, knives, toilet paper, hunting face paint, clothes, fire starters, fishing hooks, and $700 in cash.
He left the home armed with a shotgun and handgun, prosecutors said. The first victims he countered were Nichole Connors and Lynn Gardner, neighbors who were preparing to walk their dogs. Thompson was seen on video crouching as he approached the women and opened fire, court filings state. Connors and her dog were killed.
Gardner survived the attack and was able to describe the shooter as a young man in camouflage.
Gardner said she and Connors had returned to their homes from an early birthday dinner and decided to take their dogs for a walk. She described hearing a “bang, bang, bang” and hearing Connors ask why they were being shot at.
The next thing Gardner remembers is falling to the ground.
“I look down at my body and saw that I’m lying in a pool of blood. I immediately went to prayer,” she said.
Gardner said she was hospitalized for three months and suffers from severe hearing loss and short-term memory loss from the shooting. A bullet fragment remains near her heart, she said.
Connors’ husband, Tracey Howard, cried when he got on the stand.
“Austin’s actions have broken me. I don’t enjoy the things that I used to do,” he said. “It’s left me emotionally, financially, it’s left me unstable.”
Video then captured Thompson approach a vehicle in a driveway where he fatally shot Gabriel Torres, a Raleigh police officer who was headed to work.
Jasmin Torres, Gabriel’s wife, said she had returned to her Raleigh home after picking up their 2-year-old daughter when she found her husband suffering from a gunshot wound in his car. Gabriel Torres, a Raleigh police officer, was getting ready to head to work, she told the court.
“I get out my car to unbuckle her,” she said, referring to her daughter, who was in a back car seat. “As I’m unbuckling her, I realize that he’s not walking to the car. … I stopped unbuckling her, and I peek to see what’s going on.”
Torres said she saw two bullet holes in the windshield of her husband’s vehicle.
“I run to my husband. … I saw my husband, I saw Gabe, I saw that he was bleeding. I saw that he was in shock. … He was still alive,” she said, crying. “I tried to stop the bleeding. I had my fingers in every wound that I could get to, and I used my other hand to prop up his neck. … I tried to help him so that he could breathe, because his lips were turning blue.”
He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Mary Marshall was killed while trying to grab her dog after it had gotten loose. Not far from where Marshall was killed was the body of Susan Karnatz, who had been out on her daily jog.
Tom Karnatz, Susan’s husband, told the court that he and his wife were supposed to go out to dinner, but that she never returned home from her run. When he checked her location, he saw that she was in the neighborhood where the shooting happened.
“I got in the car. … My thought was I would go close to where the location was and pick her up and bring her home,” he said. “As more time went on … and I learned more information, my thoughts of bringing her home and hope that she would be OK kind of kept sinking.”
Thompson fled into the woods after the killings and was found by law enforcement. As officers closed in, he shot himself in the head but survived.
