The families of the victims of Raleigh’s mass shooting in the Hedingham neighborhood filed a new motion Monday against private security company, Capitol Special Police LLC and Capitol Officer Nicole Locke.
Details in the motion claimed that Locke arrived late to work and wasn’t in the Hedingham neighborhood when the shooting began. The motion also said that Locke didn’t call 911 right away after multiple residents reported hearing gunfire because she thought it might’ve been someone hunting in the neighborhood.
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According to court documents, the lawyers of the families requested the court to grant a “partial summary judgment,” to show that Capitol Special Police and Locke neglected to keep the community safe on Oct. 13, 2022, the day of the shooting.
A partial summary judgement is a pretrial ruling where a judge decides certain issues, claims or defenses in a lawsuit to resolve a dispute over facts.
On April 29, 2026, the lawyers for the families filed another motion that asked the court to compel Capitol Special Police to deliver GPS data, video, emails and other documents about their officer on duty on the day of the shooting, any complaints the company had related to the family of shooter Austin Thompson and any records they have about the events of Oct. 13, 2022, when Thompson killed five people in the neighborhood and along the Neuse River Greenway.
Thompson, then 15, shot and killed his brother inside the family home, then roamed through the neighborhood and onto the greenway, killing four others and wounding two more. He was convicted in February 2026 of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the chance for parole.
The families of the victims -- Marcille Gardner, Casey Clark, Nicole Connors, Susan Karnatz, Mary Marshall and Raleigh police officer Gabriel Torres -- have sued the Hedingham Community Association, Capitol Special Police and Capitol Officer Nicole Locke, Thompson and his parents, claiming those entities failed to prevent the mass shooting. A motion filed on April 29 requested that trial in the case be postponed until January 2027, to allow for additional time for discovery and a chance to discuss "further settlement opportunities."
The "motion to compel" alleges that Capitol Special Police made excuses and failed to provide the evidence the plaintiffs want, which they claim will show that Locke -- scheduled to patrol Hedingham on the afternoon of the attack -- was late to work, did not know the neighborhood well and waited to call police after hearing from four residents that they had heard gunfire.
The lawyers wrote, "CSP’s GPS data and video footage can provide the only objective, contemporaneous account of where its sole officer, Nicole Locke, was, how she moved through the community, and how she responded in the face of an active shooter."
Lawyers for the plaintiff wrote in requesting the documents from Capitol Special Police, "Defendant CSP has a severe "promise-versus-delivery" problem. The company sold Hedingham a dedicated patrol that was armed, roving, visible, GPS-monitored, and capable of handling criminal-safety issues."
In response to the first request for data and documents, the motion says, a Capitol Special Police lawyer said any GPS data from Locke's vehicle "(and apparently video footage) was deleted, and that Capitol Special Police lost all emails prior to May 2023 due to an Internet service provider change."
The motion continues, "Despite 'Chief of Police' Roy Taylor stating to the media that CSP had received a complaint about the Thompsons, in his deposition, he now denies that CSP ever received a complaint about the Thompsons.
"To date, no GPS data, video footage, or emails from Defendant CSP have been produced in discovery from before or around the time of the shooting," the motion states.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to compel Capitol Special Police to immediately provide all the requested data, adding, "In the event the Court determines that Defendant Capitol Special Police, LLC failed to preserve, destroyed, lost, or otherwise spoliated responsive evidence, imposing sanctions as are just and proper."
Hedingham victims' families struggle to get data to prove suit
In January 2026, the court ordered the city of Raleigh to provide summaries of certain police calls to the Hedingham neighborhood in the months before the October 2022 mass shooting.
The families' civil suit alleges that Thompson, then 15, posed a known threat to his neighbors. The information from the police summaries can only be used for the civil lawsuit and can only be seen by the court, lawyers, experts and others directly involved in the case.