Thompson guilty: Plea accepted in Raleigh mass shooting

Austin Thompson stood in a Wake County court on Wednesday and entered a guilty plea to five counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault with deadly weapon with intent to kill and one count of assault with firearm on law enforcement officer.

Judge Paul Ridgway questioned the teen about his awareness of his rights, the case and the charges. 

Thompson answered yes over and over, asserting he knew what he was doing and that he was taking responsibility for the deaths of five people in a shooting spree in October 2022.

He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. The maximum possible sentence for Thompson would be five life sentences plus an additional 1,634 months in prison.

Timeline, path, deaths of Raleigh mass shooting

Before Ridgway would accept the plea, Wake County Assistant District Attorney Joseph Latour laid out the case against Thompson for the court.

Latour said Thompson first shot his brother, James Thompson, in the back of the head around 4:20 p.m. on Oct. 13, 2022. When James did not immediately die, Austin Thompson stabbed him dozens of times. According to a note found in the Thompson home after the crimes, it took about 10 minutes for James to die, Latour said.

Thompson then went around the house gathering guns and ammunition, "the items he would use to carry out this rampage," Latour said. 

About 40 minutes after Thompson shot his brother, Latour said, he was captured on Ring doorbell camera video launching an attack on two neighbors returning from a walk.

Nicole Connors and Lynn Gardner were each shot multiple times.

"You hear that he fires what sounds like five shots from a long gun ... then transitions to a handgun," Latour said.

Connors and her dog were found dead on the front porch of their home. Gardner spent months in the hospital recovering from her injuries. "She still suffers the effects of this today," Latour said.

In her statement to police, Gardner said she looked at Thompson and asked him why he had shot them. 

Latour told the court that another camera captured Thompson in the street around 5:10 p.m., approaching a car where Raleigh Police Officer Gabriel Torres was preparing to leave for work.

Torres was on the phone with his wife, waiting for her to return home before he would leave. She heard gunshots ring out over the phone, Latour said.

As Thompson made his way through the neighborhood, another person spotted him and yelled at him to stop. Thompson did so, and pointed his gun at that witness. After Thompson left the area, that man went outside to check on his neighbor Torres only to find Torres' wife over his body, Latour told the court.

Latour said that witnesses and camera evidence shows Thompson then made his way to the Neuse River Greenway where he encountered Mary Marshall, who had told her fiancée she was going to look for their dog. Marshall was shot at least four times and was found facedown, with her dog attending her body, Latour said.

Further along the greenway, Susan Karnatz was on her daily jog. Her husband discovered she had died by checking her devices and noticing they were stationary, Latour said. She was shot at least three times with a shotgun, he said.   

"There's some reloading that apparently has happened from start to this point in time," Latour said.

An hours-long law enforcement search involved sheriff's deputies, Raleigh police and various other agencies as Thompson made his way along the wood line and the Neuse River. 

Officers followed a canine track to a property on McConnell-Oliver Drive with multiple large sheds and heard, inside one of the sheds, a loud bang, Latour said. One of the officers was struck by pellets of the shotgun blast in the knee and his injury ended his career in law enforcement, Latour said.

"The evidence would have shown that the defendant fired from within the shed about four rounds from the shotgun," Latour said.

Thompson, still wearing a backpack, was taken into custody suffering what appeared to be a self-inflicted shot to the head. "There was blood and other matter in the gun that would have been consistent with a close-range gunshot wound," Latour said.

He added that body camera footage shows there were never any law enforcement officers inside the shed who could have fired the shot that injured Thompson.

Latour said Thompson had bags and pockets full of ammunition and "a series of firearms" when he was taken into custody. In addition, Thompson's cellphone showed he followed coverage of the shootings and search for a suspect in real-time as he was attempting to avoid capture.

Aside from the evidence of the day, Latour explained, Thompson’s internet search history indicated he was planning the attack for a long time.

Sentencing could be complicated by head injury, age

Ridgway has yet to set a date for Thompson to be sentenced.

That process will essentially run like a trial. Both the defense and prosecutors will be allowed to present witnesses, a process Ridgway said could take days or weeks.

Chris Detwiler, a criminal defense attorney not associated with Thompson's case, says Thompson's age could complicate the sentencing process.

Because Thompson was under 18 when the crimes took place, under North Carolina law he can't face the death penalty. 

"It'll be a long, drawn-out process," Detwiler said. 

"Both sides are presenting mitigation, but I guess I'd say the defense is presenting mitigation, you know, his age, some of the other stuff that's been suggested in the filings, and then the state's presenting the impact that it had to the community and the victims, and then the judge is just deciding what sentence to impose," he said.

Again, the sentence range available to Ridgway is a minimum of a life sentence with the possibility for parole after 20 years. Thompson could be free before he turns 40.