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A shooting spree, an hours-long search and a neighborhood on edge: 5 killed, two injured in mass shooting in east Raleigh

In calls to 911 that began around 5 p.m. on Thursday, residents of Raleigh's Hedingham neighborhood described gunshots and screams.

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WRAL News
RALEIGH, N.C. — In calls to 911 that began around 5 p.m. on Thursday, residents of Raleigh's Hedingham neighborhood described gunshots and screams.

"I see a white kid running around here with a shot gun," one caller told dispatchers. "He ran back into the woods near the Neuse River."

"We heard some shots outside, and I looked out my window, and there is the neighbor on the ground I think," a caller said.

Another caller, secure inside a home on Osprey Cove Drive, described multiple shots then people screaming.

A third caller identified one of the victims as an off-duty police officer.

"I’ve got one down. One male down. Hispanic. This is bad. He’s an off-duty officer," the caller said. The Raleigh Police Department on Friday said that Officer Gabriel Torres, 29, was among the dead.

Sources tell WRAL News that 15-year-old Austin Thompson is suspected of killing five and injuring two others in the shooting spree in an east Raleigh neighborhood on Thursday.

Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson said the initial shooting occurred in the streets of the neighborhood before the shooter ran onto the Neuse River greenway, where more people were shot. He was captured on a property on McConnell Oliver Drive, about six miles from his home.

Raleigh Chief of Police Estella Patterson said the initial shooting occurred in the streets of the Hedingham neighborhood before the shooter ran onto The Neuse River Greenway, where more people were shot.

In addition to Torres, James Thompson, the older brother of the alleged shooter, Nicole Conners, 52, Mary Marshall, 34, and Susan Karnatz, 49, died.

Conners' husband told WRAL News that he found his wife and her dog, Sami, both dead on their porch.

In addition to the five killed, two others were were injured. One of them was a Raleigh police officer, who was treated and released from the hospital. Marcielle Gardner, 59, was still at WakeMed on Friday in critical condition.

A man who lives in the neighborhood told WRAL News he saw the shooter outside the back window of his home after hearing gunshots. He saw a woman running in the same area.

"If this poor lady I saw that was jogging is hurt ... I don't know," he described with emotion.

Raleigh police responded to a call of shots fired in the 6000 block of Osprey Cove Drive after 5 p.m. Thursday. Police searched door-to-door for hours in the Hedingham neighborhood and along the Neuse River trail before containing the teenage suspect around 9:30 p.m. in an area off Old Milburnie Road.

Investigators on Friday morning were focusing their investigation on several homes on Sahalle Way, in the same neighborhood where the shooting occurred. WRAL News is working to learn the connection.

"He had to be between 13 and 16 max," said a witness who saw the shooter. "He was a child. You just don't imagine things like that. You hear about school shootings and stuff, but to really see something like that in your neighborhood is just ..."

Neighbors were shaken. A man named Robert, a Hedingham resident, told WRAL News that he called 911 around 5 p.m.

"I heard two gunshots, and they were really loud so I knew something was close by, and then I heard three other gunshots," he said. "I saw him basically pass my house in the backyard. He had a long-barrel shotgun. He was dressed in camo. He had a full backpack on that was also camouflage."

"Tonight, terror has reached our doorstep," said Gov. Roy Cooper, who spoke at a news conference at Raleigh city hall. "The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh. This is a senseless, horrific and infuriating act of violence that has been committed."

Cooper on Friday ordered all U.S. and North Carolina flags at state facilities to half-staff in honor of the victims.

"Today we’re sad, we’re angry, and we want to know the answers to all the questions," he said Friday. "No neighborhood, no parent, no grandchild, no grandparent should feel this fear in this community. No one. As policymakers we will not turn away from what has happened here."

"This is a sad and tragic day for the city of Raleigh," said Mayor Mary Ann Baldwin. “We must stop this mindless violence in America. We must address gun violence.”

Search for shooter spans both sides of Neuse River, lasts for hours

Police swarmed the area of Osprey Cove Drive in the search and asked residents to stay indoors.

In the search for the suspect, police, sheriff's deputies and state troopers spread out on in neighborhoods along the Neuse, and K-9 officers searched in an area along the woods near the intersection of Tarheel Club Road and Old Milburnie Road.

East Raleigh police presence

Part of New Bern Avenue was shut down, and access to and within Hedingham was limited for hours. The exit from eastbound Interstate 540 to Buffaloe Road was also shut down and traffic diverted to the north. Staff and students at nearby Beaver Dam Elementary were locked down, and the Marsh Creek community center and Buffaloe Aquatic Center were both evacuated.

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