In the blink of an eye, everything changed. And the thing that made it change was 15-year-old Austin David Thompson’s knowing, researched, well-thought-out, planned, decisive actions on October 13th, 2022.
Austin first killed his brother James Thompson at home by shooting him in the head with a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle and stabbing him 57 times in the neck. Then, armed with a shotgun, handgun, and hunting knife, Austun went out into the street, where he fatally shot Nicole Connors and her dog Sami, and critically wounded Lynn Gardiner, a visiting friend who was in the driveway of the same house. He proceeded through Hedingham, shooting to death Gabriel Torres, an off-duty police officer in the 6000 block of Osprey Drive. He then ran to the nearby Neuse River Trail, where he fatally shot Susan Karnatz, who was jogging, and Mary Marshall, who was walking her pet dog.
A police dog eventually tracked Austin to a wooded area with two barn-like buildings. When the police arrived at 6:45 p.m., Austin fired multiple times at the police, injuring officer Casey Clark. Several officers returned fire, shooting an estimated 23 rounds at the building. After setting a perimeter around the structure, officers commanded Austin to surrender his weapons and come out with his hands up. At 9:34 p.m., Selective Enforcement Unit officers breached the building and found Austin inside. He had suffered a gunshot wound to the head and was transported to WakeMed to be treated.
There were five people and a dog that was killed, and two others that were wounded. There were four separate crime scenes spanning 2 miles. Police received the first 9-1-1 call about the shooting at 5:13, P:M, and At 5:55, P:M, the Raleigh Police Department announced on Twitter that it was on the scene of an active shooter situation in the area. While Austin was at large, local residents were advised by law enforcement at 6:49 p.m.to stay indoors.
He was later arrested in a shed after a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
Austin made his first official court appearance on October 4, 2023, where he was charged as an adult with five counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts assault with deadly weapon with intent to kill, and one count of assault with firearm on law enforcement officer. His father was also cited for failing to store his guns.
Austin did plead guilty to his charges.
Prosecutors revealed the previously confidential contents of a handwritten note with Austin’s name and the shooting date found at his family’s house in the Hedingham subdivision.
The note said the “reason I did this is because I hate humans they are destroying the planet/earth,” adding that he killed James Thompson” because he would get in my way.”
Austin “cannot tell you why he wrote that note the way that he did,” defense lawyer Deonte’ Thomas said, noting that he had no history of ecological-based anger. “And he cannot tell you why he ran down the streets of Hedingham terrorizing people that day.”
But “he is not unredeemable, he is not incorrigible,” Thomas added in asking Ridgeway to give him the opportunity one day to tell parole commissioners he could “still be a productive person in society.”
Austin’s attorneys argued that the rampage happened during a dissociative episode caused by medicine he regularly took for acne. A psychiatrist who interviewed Thompson and a geneticist testified to bolster the explanation, but Ridgeway rejected the theory Friday, saying the facts belied the argument.
During court proceedings, the court heard continued testimony from Raleigh Police Sgt. Robert Pike, who reviewed Austin’s internet activity on his phone and laptop, and expert testimony from Karie Gibson, the chief of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.
The testimony focused on his possible state of mind leading up to the killings and how long he may have been planning the shooting.
As she questioned Robert Pike, defense attorney Kellie Mannette challenged assertions that Austin fixated on mass shootings during a two-year period before the massacre, noting that many of the searches’ police cited as evidence were tied to events in the news. That included the mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store and at Uvalde Elementary School in Texas.
Austin appeared to briefly laugh with public defender Deonte’ Thomas when Mannette asked Robert Pike if he had any knowledge of the teen planning to prostitute himself. The question was tied to Google searches for legal consequences for a variety of crimes, including prostitution, which appeared to have been made on austin’s phone in the fall of 2021.
Mannette raised the possibility that some of the searches police found concerning may have been related to schoolwork, like Google searches for the interior of Knightdale High School, where Austinn was a sophomore at the time of the attack. She claimed he had a homework assignment involving a diagram of the school.
Austin had accessed a Washington Post article on why many mass shooters were “angry young men” on the afternoon of Oct. 7, 2022, Robert Pike testified. It wasn’t clear whether the article had been sent to him or if he’d searched for it.
At one point in her questioning, Mannette stood next to Robert Pike and took him through the arithmetic behind Austin’s web activity, guiding him through calculating the percentages of different categories of entries noted by police.
Of the 29,460 entries of web activity police reviewed, Mannette noted, 0.5% (or 148) of those involved searches for consequences of violent crimes; 0.1% involved searches of serial killers. Every other type of concerning entry comprised less than 0.01% of Austin’s total search history, she argued.
Ultimately, Robert Pike testified that less than 10% of Austin’s total web searches accounted for investigators’ focus in the Hedingham case. There was no evidence on his electronic devices that he held extremist views, wanted notoriety or indicated to anyone he planned to do something violent, he said.
Gibson provided expert testimony on how those behind acts of mass violence typically plan out their crimes. Mannette objected to her testimony, but the objection was overruled.
Mannette said, “This is an FBI profiler who has no individual information about Austin Thompson. I cannot imagine how this is relevant at a sentencing hearing. She doesn’t know anything about Austin or this crime.”
Gibson is a clinical psychologist who has worked for the FBI for 19 years, including a stint as a special agent in Minneapolis and four years leading the 20-person Behavioral Analysis Unit. The BAU helps law enforcement with psychological profiles of violent offenders.
People who commit acts of targeted violence typically follow a “pathway to violence,” Gibson said, referencing a staircase-like graphic that displayed five steps preceding an attack. The pathway can vary from person to person but typically involves a grievance, ideation, research and planning, preparation and breach before the attack, she testified.
“When you have an individual that is beginning to progress on the pathway to violence, there is this grievance … a personal slight or an injustice that has occurred for them,” Gibson said. “They’re trying to work through that to understand what that really means and what they can do with that.”
Those grievances can be real or perceived, she noted, but aren’t always clear to outsiders. Researchers found that in 21% of the cases they reviewed, they couldn’t determine the violent offender’s grievance, likely because it was “highly personal” and would need to be shared by the offender, Gibson said.
When people can’t figure out how to resolve that grievance, it can progress into violent ideation.
“It can be suicidality, it can be homicidality, it can be consumption of violent content online, it can be consuming violent imagery or movies,” she said.
As they research and plan their attack, they may fixate on notorious figures who are well-known for their own violent acts, Gibson said. The research and planning phase can range from a month to two years in duration.
“The next step after research and planning is preparation, and really, this is where you actually get the tools to do the attack,” Gibson said. “We will find that individuals, once they enter preparation, they can ultimately do the attack within 24 hours to 7 days when they obtain the weaponry to do the attack.”
Breach is the stage where an attacker does a “dry run” of their plan to ensure their success, according to Gibson. It’s not clear if Thompson ever did this.
“When we look at these cases, what we find is that when someone is selecting the targets, they are going to look at three different factors,” she said. “What’s desirable to them … then they have to look at what is vulnerable, because that most desirable target might not be vulnerable. And then they, after that, will consider what’s available.”
Gibson testified that in 100% of the cases she reviewed, at least one person had reported an offender’s concerning behavior before the attack. But bystanders often didn’t understand what that behavior meant at the time, she noted. Thompson’s parents have testified they had no warning signs from their son.
Only about 10% to 13% of cases involve a primary family member as a victim, Gibson said.
“We don’t have key research findings that say exactly why that is,” she said.
But in her experience, when a family member is injured or killed it’s often for one of three reasons, she testified:
- The family member was part of the offender’s original grievance.
- The offender wants to spare their family member from the aftermath of what they’re about to do.
- The offender wants to punish someone left behind.
Additionally, 88% of active shooters 17 and younger had shared their intent to commit violence with someone else, whether through discussing violence or hinting at their fixation on violence, Gibson testified.
Austin’s parents testified they couldn’t explain why their son committed the violence, calling him a normal, happy kid who did well in school and showed no signs of destruction.
The judge sentenced Austin to life in prison without parole, rejecting the arguments that he deserved the chance for release decades from now.
Austin did not speak publicly in court, and he was quickly led away in handcuffs after the sentencing. Family members of the shooting victims cried as the sentence was handed down. His attorneys announced plans to appeal the sentence.
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, but Austin did not face the death penalty given his age at the time of the crimes.
“It’s hard to conceive of a greater display of malice,” the Judge said after chronicling the events of that day, adding that Austin’s months of planning and fantasizing before the rampage confirmed he is the rare juvenile offender “whose crimes reflect irreparable corruption” and thus required a life without parole sentence.
Jasmin Torres, the widow of Gabriel Torres and the mother of their 5-year-old daughter, asked Ridgeway last week to sentence Austin to life without parole, calling him a “monster.”
Rob Steele, Marshall’s fiancé at the time of her death, said after the hearing that while five consecutive sentences of life without parole were “what we were all hoping for,” Austin still “ended five lives for reasons that I still don’t really understand in this case.”
Austin’s father pleaded guilty in 2024 to improperly storing his handgun that authorities said was found when his son was arrested. He received a suspended sentence and probation.
“We both lost our children, one at the hand of the other. We never saw this coming and still cannot make sense of it,” Mother Elise Thompson said last week while telling the families of shooting victims she will “forever be sorry for the pain that this has caused you.”
Additionally, the security guard on duty the day of the Hedingham mass shooting, along with several companies that had been tasked with protecting the neighborhood, settled a lawsuit with families of those killed and survivors affected by the shooting.
The settlement involved the Raleigh neighborhood’s homeowners’ association, its contracted security company Capitol Special Police and property management company HRW, all of which family members and survivors argued were negligent in protecting the community they were meant to serve. Nicole Locke, the security guard working the evening of the shooting in October 2022, also settled in the case.
Two survivors of the shooting and family members of four of the five victims filed the lawsuit in October 2024 against the neighborhood organizations, as well as against the shooter Austin Thompson and his parents
In May, the plaintiffs asked a judge for an immediate ruling on the security company and Locke — who they argued was negligent for failing to call 911 for 20 minutes after hearing gunfire and being unfamiliar with the neighborhood’s grounds. Locke was also nearly an hour late to work that day, arriving in the neighborhood around the same time Austin killed his brother, The N&O reported.
And Capitol Special Police, the lawsuit argued, should have never assigned Locke to her post, knowing she’d only worked there a few times before and wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood.
The lawsuit also alleged the property management company and homeowners’ association had discouraged residents from “taking personal action regarding safety and security measures” as community members raised concerns about “inadequate security measures” like frequent break-ins and public disturbances, court records showed.
The lawsuit will proceed against Austin Thompson and his parents, with a trial date set for January 2027.
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