# 376: 2022 Raleigh Shootings

An episode of [Morbidology](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1463979546), 31 Aug 2026, 1 h 31 min.

Audio: https://prefix.up.audio/s/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/s.gum.fm/s-610c47a4222ada0024acb2d8/pscrb.fm/rss/p/prfx.byspotify.com/e/tracking.swap.fm/track/2IMk17EdnEqyRhJTIpIU/claritaspod.com/measure/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73123208/morbidology_376_2022_raleigh_shootings_ad_free.mp3

On the evening of 13th October 2022, in the Hedingham neighbourhood of northeast Raleigh, North Carolina, residents heard shots. Those who stepped outside saw a figure moving through the quiet suburban streets. He was dressed head to toe in camouflage, carrying a long gun, walking with slow and deliberate purpose through a neighbourhood he had known his entire life. SPONSORS - Nutrafol: Find out why Nutrafol is the best-selling hair growth supplement. Use code “MORBIDOLOGY10” for $10 off at: http://nutrafol.com/ Whisker: Learn more about Whisker Litter-Robot models and starter kits today. Take an additional $50 off bundles with code MORBIDOLOGY at: http://whisker.com/morbidology Drip Drop: DripDrop uses science-based formulas for rapid hydration, so you feel results fast while getting 3x the electrolytes of leading sports drinks. Get 20% with promo code "MORBIDOLOGY" at: http://dripdrop.com/ Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/morbidology--3527306/support.

## Transcript

[0:35] Speaker 1: And we heard some I'm sorry, and I looked out
[0:38] Speaker 1: my window and the neighborhoods on the crown.
[0:41] Speaker 2: I think.
[0:52] Speaker 3: Raleigh in North Carolina wasn't a city that grew the
[0:54] Speaker 3: way most American cities too. It didn't emerge organically Ronda
[0:59] Speaker 3: port or trading post or a river crossing it was designed.
[1:04] Speaker 3: It grew slowly at first. For much of the nineteenth century,
[1:07] Speaker 3: it was a modest capital town. During the Civil War,
[1:11] Speaker 3: Raleigh surrendered without a fight to General Sherman's Union forces
[1:15] Speaker 3: in April eighteen sixty five and escaped the destruction that
[1:19] Speaker 3: leveled so much of the South. The city that emerged
[1:23] Speaker 3: on the other side was intact, and in time, it
[1:26] Speaker 3: would put that advantage to use. The rail transformation came
[1:30] Speaker 3: after the Second World War. In nineteen fifty nine, the
[1:34] Speaker 3: state of North Carolina created Research Triangle Park, a seven
[1:38] Speaker 3: thousand acre research campus positioned between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.
[1:44] Speaker 3: By twenty twenty two, nearly half a million people lived
[1:47] Speaker 3: in Raleigh. It had been ranked among the best places
[1:51] Speaker 3: to live in the United States. It was growing at
[1:54] Speaker 3: nearly two point five percent every year. On the northeastern
[1:58] Speaker 3: edge of the city, a neighborhood called Herringham had been
[2:01] Speaker 3: taking shape since the early nineteen nineties. It was the
[2:06] Speaker 3: kind of place that real estate listings described as a
[2:08] Speaker 3: hidden gem, established enough to feel settled, well maintained enough
[2:13] Speaker 3: to feel cared for, close enough to the city to
[2:16] Speaker 3: be convenient, and far enough from it to feel removed.
[2:20] Speaker 3: Herringham had a golf course, and the Noose River Greenway
[2:23] Speaker 3: trail ran alongside the neighborhood, a long paved path through
[2:28] Speaker 3: trees and open grain space. More than two thy five
[2:32] Speaker 3: hundred homes had been built there, single family houses and
[2:35] Speaker 3: town homes on lots that averaged a quarter of an acre.
[2:40] Speaker 3: The people who lived in Herringham had been there long
[2:42] Speaker 3: enough to know each other. They waved when they passed
[2:45] Speaker 3: on the street. They shared a neighborhood Facebook group. They
[2:49] Speaker 3: complained to the h OA when something bothered them. Then,
[2:53] Speaker 3: on the evening of the thirteenth of October twenty twenty two,
[2:57] Speaker 3: loud shots could be heard in the neighborhood. People looked
[3:01] Speaker 3: up from what they were doing and went to their windows.
[3:05] Speaker 3: Some went to their front doors. What those who stepped
[3:08] Speaker 3: outside saw stopped them moving through the straits of heading
[3:12] Speaker 3: him in the early evening light was a figure in
[3:15] Speaker 3: full camouflage gear carrying a long gun and a backpack.
[3:20] Speaker 3: One neighbor who saw him that evening said afterwards that
[3:24] Speaker 3: the figure had looked to her like a baby, a
[3:29] Speaker 3: baby dressed for war, moving through the streets where he
[3:33] Speaker 3: had grown up. Alise Thompson had lived in Herdingham since
[3:52] Speaker 3: nineteen ninety eight, and when she married Alan in July
[3:55] Speaker 3: of two thousand and four, the house on Sahal Lee
[3:58] Speaker 3: Way became the home they built their life for nearly
[4:02] Speaker 3: two decades. Heavingham was simply where the Thompsons belonged. Their
[4:07] Speaker 3: two sons grew up on those same streets. James Roger
[4:11] Speaker 3: Thompson was born first, and Austin followed roughly a year later.
[4:16] Speaker 3: By the autumn of twenty twenty two, James was sixteen
[4:19] Speaker 3: and Austin was fifteen. They were close enough in age
[4:23] Speaker 3: to share a bedroom, world to move through the same
[4:26] Speaker 3: hallways to attend the same school. James was a junior
[4:29] Speaker 3: at Nightdale High School. His pastor at Trinity Baptist Church,
[4:34] Speaker 3: where Alice had been bringing him since the second grade,
[4:37] Speaker 3: described him as respectful and said that he smiled a lot.
[4:41] Speaker 3: He arrived early to Sunday school and went straight to
[4:44] Speaker 3: work helping set up the classroom. He was the can
[4:48] Speaker 3: of teenager who made an impression on adults simply by
[4:51] Speaker 3: being present and good natured. His interests were wide. He
[4:56] Speaker 3: had tried nearly every sport imaginable soccer, swimming, tea, ball, baseball,
[5:03] Speaker 3: before he finally found his place on the basketball court.
[5:07] Speaker 3: On defense, he was intense, pressing his opponents so closely
[5:11] Speaker 3: they could barely move. He played on Trinity's upward basketball
[5:15] Speaker 3: team and had been looking forward to the new season.
[5:19] Speaker 3: Away from sport, James had an entrepreneurial streak that had
[5:22] Speaker 3: shown itself early. Walking the golf course at having him
[5:26] Speaker 3: with his father, he had started collecting stray balls, scrubbing
[5:30] Speaker 3: them clean, and then selling them back to passing golfers.
[5:35] Speaker 3: Pleased with the result, James had set up a lemonade
[5:37] Speaker 3: stand nearby. He was teaching himself how to cook, working
[5:42] Speaker 3: through YouTube videos of Gordon Ramsey practicing with spices and
[5:45] Speaker 3: flavors to make what he considered the best sandwiches. He'd
[5:50] Speaker 3: been deep sea fishing and loved it. He traveled with
[5:54] Speaker 3: his father to see the World Series twice. He enjoyed
[5:58] Speaker 3: trips to the beach and mountain, and loved to play
[6:01] Speaker 3: on his PlayStation four. He was thinking about college, planning
[6:06] Speaker 3: on enc State, telling his father he'd stay home the
[6:09] Speaker 3: first year or two to save money. Austin, who was
[6:13] Speaker 3: a year behind his brother at Nightsdale High School as
[6:16] Speaker 3: a sophomore, was a quieter presence. Where James moved easily
[6:21] Speaker 3: through the world, Austin kept closer to home. He too
[6:25] Speaker 3: like video games and phishing. He would tag along to
[6:28] Speaker 3: the grocery store with his mother because he and James
[6:31] Speaker 3: both liked picking out ice cream. His teachers remembered him
[6:35] Speaker 3: as a quiet student. He sometimes drifted into computer games
[6:40] Speaker 3: during class, but nothing that set him apart. At least.
[6:44] Speaker 3: Described both of her boys as really good kids as
[6:49] Speaker 3: far as she knew. She later said neither of them
[6:51] Speaker 3: had ever handed in a late assignment. She and Alan
[6:56] Speaker 3: had no reason to think otherwise. The family home on
[7:01] Speaker 3: Sahalee Way held eleven firearms. The family had four shotguns,
[7:06] Speaker 3: five rifles, two pistols, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
[7:11] Speaker 3: Alan kept a loaded nine millimeter handgun in an unlocked
[7:15] Speaker 3: box on the bedside table. He took his boys on
[7:19] Speaker 3: weekend trips to go hunting and fishing. They always took
[7:23] Speaker 3: photographs together to send back to a lease at home.
[7:28] Speaker 3: Guns were part of ordinary life in the Thompson household,
[7:32] Speaker 3: familiar objects with a practical place in a father and
[7:35] Speaker 3: son relationship. What nobody in that house appeared to notice
[7:41] Speaker 3: was that Austin had begun looking at them differently. His
[7:45] Speaker 3: teachers would later say they saw nothing alarming. He was
[7:49] Speaker 3: said to be a boy who lost focus, who drifted,
[7:54] Speaker 3: But something had shifted beneath the surface. Austin had begun
[7:58] Speaker 3: spending time online in ways that went far beyond video games,
[8:03] Speaker 3: moving through corners of the Internet where his searches grew
[8:07] Speaker 3: darker and more specific. He was reading about violence. He
[8:12] Speaker 3: was reading about perpetrators. He was thinking about something, turning
[8:18] Speaker 3: it over quietly, and the people closest to him had
[8:21] Speaker 3: no idea. On the morning of the thirteenth of October
[8:25] Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, both brothers went to school as normal.
[8:30] Speaker 3: They came home together in the afternoon, they sat down
[8:34] Speaker 3: and played video games. Alan was at work, Alise was
[8:38] Speaker 3: at the hairdresser. It was an ordinary Thursday in Headingham
[8:53] Speaker 3: at around four twenty pm, Austin got up. He went
[8:57] Speaker 3: into one of the rooms in the house and retreind
[9:00] Speaker 3: a twenty two caliber rifle. Then he walked back to
[9:03] Speaker 3: where his brother James was sitting. Austin came up close
[9:08] Speaker 3: behind him and lifted the gun. He then shot his
[9:12] Speaker 3: brother once in the head, but the shot didn't kill James.
[9:17] Speaker 3: He managed to stumble to the bathroom. Austin went and
[9:21] Speaker 3: grabbed a knife and returned to his brother. He then
[9:24] Speaker 3: proceeded to stab him fifty seven times, focusing mostly on
[9:29] Speaker 3: his neck. Once his brother was dead, Austin wrote a
[9:33] Speaker 3: note in his bedroom which read, the reason I did
[9:37] Speaker 3: this is because I hate humans. They are destroying the
[9:40] Speaker 3: planet slash earth. I killed him at four twenty, about
[9:45] Speaker 3: five minutes off. Maybe he kept breathing, so I stabbed him.
[9:49] Speaker 3: Stopped breathing about ten to fifteen minutes later. I don't
[9:53] Speaker 3: have a goal. I'm not suicidal. Death is like sleep.
[9:57] Speaker 3: That's why I don't care if I die. I was
[10:00] Speaker 3: never bullied or anything by Dad. I don't like you, Mum.
[10:05] Speaker 3: Every other family member is good. Thanks Jan and DeAngelo
[10:09] Speaker 3: for taking me hunting. I don't want to die, but
[10:11] Speaker 3: it's going to happen anyway. You were the best dad.
[10:15] Speaker 3: I was never bullied in school either, Copps. I killed
[10:19] Speaker 3: James because he would get in my way. I killed
[10:22] Speaker 3: James with the Subsonic twenty two I stole from Cabella's.
[10:26] Speaker 3: I have no regrets. I'm not mental either, I was
[10:30] Speaker 3: saying when I did this. Austin finished writing the note,
[10:35] Speaker 3: but he wasn't finished. He spent the next thirty or
[10:38] Speaker 3: so minutes moving through the house and collecting weapons. He
[10:43] Speaker 3: grabbed a handgun, a hunting knife, along with hundreds of
[10:46] Speaker 3: rounds of ammunition. He stripped off his clothing and changed
[10:51] Speaker 3: into full camouflage gear. He packed a large backpack with water,
[10:56] Speaker 3: cereal bars, toilet roll, a change of clothing, fire star,
[11:00] Speaker 3: fishing hooks, a first aid kid, hunting face, paint, knives,
[11:04] Speaker 3: and seven hundred dollars in cash. Then he walked out
[11:09] Speaker 3: of the front door and into the quiet neighborhood. Nicole
[11:19] Speaker 3: Connors had lived in Headingham for years. She was fifty
[11:23] Speaker 3: two years old and originally from Dayton in Ohio. Her
[11:27] Speaker 3: neighbors described her as someone who had never met a stranger,
[11:31] Speaker 3: who was always willing to listen and always the first
[11:34] Speaker 3: to show up when somebody needed help. One neighbor would
[11:38] Speaker 3: Row Glass fondly remembered she was friendly with everyone in
[11:41] Speaker 3: the neighborhood, spoke to everyone, and was really respected here.
[11:47] Speaker 3: Nicole had worked in human resources as an independent contractor,
[11:51] Speaker 3: but some years earlier had stepped away from her career
[11:54] Speaker 3: to care for her mother after she suffered a stroke.
[11:58] Speaker 3: That was the kind of persons what it was. Her husband,
[12:02] Speaker 3: Tracy Howard, called her a beautiful soul. He said that
[12:06] Speaker 3: she was a go getter, that she always looked out
[12:09] Speaker 3: for people around her, that she made sure he went
[12:12] Speaker 3: to his doctor's appointments. He remembered anything that had to
[12:17] Speaker 3: be done, she was going to do it, and she
[12:19] Speaker 3: was going to make sure it was done right. They
[12:23] Speaker 3: had been married for five years. They like to get
[12:26] Speaker 3: out of the house and explore the restaurant scene together.
[12:30] Speaker 3: They had tickets for the upcoming Black Panther movie and
[12:33] Speaker 3: had plans to go to the State Fair that weekend.
[12:38] Speaker 3: Tracy remembered finding their home and having.
[12:40] Speaker 4: Him well, I was in charge of finding the place,
[12:48] Speaker 4: while of course she was still o higher.
[12:51] Speaker 2: She hadn't moved down yet. She put me in charge
[12:53] Speaker 2: of finding the place, so I searched around that came
[12:56] Speaker 2: across the hitting him neighborhood. I thought it was a
[12:58] Speaker 2: nice neighborhood. I've seen, you know, a lot of people
[13:01] Speaker 2: walking your dogs, so I thought that would be perfect
[13:04] Speaker 2: for her, and I just seen like a nice neighborhood.
[13:09] Speaker 3: Nicole had a dog, a Jack Russell mix named Sammy,
[13:13] Speaker 3: who was thirteen years old and went almost everywhere with her.
[13:17] Speaker 3: Most evenings, Nicole walked Sammy through the neighborhood or along
[13:21] Speaker 3: the green way, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. That Thursday evening,
[13:27] Speaker 3: her friend Lynn Gardner had come over to celebrate. Lynn
[13:31] Speaker 3: was about to turn sixty. She was a special education teacher.
[13:37] Speaker 3: Her friends described her as somebody who was positive and generous.
[13:42] Speaker 3: Lynn had come to Nichole's house that evening to spend
[13:45] Speaker 3: some time with her friend. Lynn spoke about her friendship
[13:49] Speaker 3: with Nicole.
[13:51] Speaker 1: Well, we both had fur babies, and we would walk
[13:56] Speaker 1: our dogs frequently. We would sit on my porch at
[14:02] Speaker 1: times and people watch and have girly conversations, and we
[14:09] Speaker 1: would sometimes be on her porch and people watching and
[14:13] Speaker 1: watching her dogs play.
[14:15] Speaker 3: They had gone to dinner and then came back to
[14:17] Speaker 3: the neighborhood to walk their dogs together. They were on
[14:21] Speaker 3: Sahale Way, a few doors down from the Thompson house
[14:25] Speaker 3: when Austin came out the front door. He was wearing
[14:29] Speaker 3: camouflage and he was carrying a shotgun. Surveillance footage would
[14:34] Speaker 3: later show him crouching low as he approached the two women,
[14:39] Speaker 3: moving with a deliberateness that left no doubt about what
[14:42] Speaker 3: he intended. He then opened fire. Nicole was shot in
[14:49] Speaker 3: the face, neck, and stomach. She died there in her
[14:53] Speaker 3: own driveway, alongside her little dog, Sammy. Lynn Gardner was
[14:59] Speaker 3: also shot. She fell to the grand critically injured but alive,
[15:05] Speaker 3: as Austin left them and moved further into the neighborhood.
[15:09] Speaker 3: Lynn would later recall hearing Nicole's voice in the moments
[15:12] Speaker 3: before she lost consciousness. She heard her friend ask, why
[15:17] Speaker 3: are you shooting us? Austin Thompson didn't respond, He just
[15:22] Speaker 3: kept walking. Gabriel Torres was twenty nine years old and
[15:37] Speaker 3: had spent his adult life in service to others. He
[15:41] Speaker 3: grew up in New Jersey, served in the United States
[15:44] Speaker 3: Marine Corps, and after his time in the military, traveled
[15:47] Speaker 3: to Puerto Rico in two thousand and seventeen to help
[15:50] Speaker 3: victims of Hurricane Maria. He joined the Raleigh Police Department
[15:55] Speaker 3: in March twenty and twenty one and had already earned
[15:58] Speaker 3: a letter of commendation for the rest. His colleagues described
[16:03] Speaker 3: him as a calming presence on calls, the kind of
[16:06] Speaker 3: officer people felt that he's around. He lived on Osprey
[16:10] Speaker 3: Cove Drive, just straights away from the Thompson family. He
[16:15] Speaker 3: and his wife, Jasmine, had a two year old daughter
[16:18] Speaker 3: named Leilah. That evening, Gabriel was getting ready for a
[16:22] Speaker 3: night shift. Jasmine had taken Leilah out and was on
[16:26] Speaker 3: her way back home. Gabriel called her. He was ready
[16:30] Speaker 3: to leave for work, but he wanted to wait to
[16:33] Speaker 3: be there when they got back so we could kiss
[16:35] Speaker 3: his daughter goodbye before heading to work. He staid in
[16:39] Speaker 3: his car engine, running phone in hand. He was still
[16:43] Speaker 3: on the call with Jasmine when Austin rounded the corner
[16:47] Speaker 3: onto Ausbury Cove Drive and walked up to the vehicle.
[16:51] Speaker 3: Austin shot Gabriel three times at close range. Jasmine heard
[16:56] Speaker 3: the shots through the phone. She was just around the
[16:59] Speaker 3: court corner. When she arrived back home, she saw her
[17:03] Speaker 3: husband's car parked in the driveway.
[17:06] Speaker 5: I I leave.
[17:08] Speaker 6: Laila strapped in the car, and I run to my husband.
[17:14] Speaker 7: And do you go to the passenger side of his car?
[17:17] Speaker 1: I do?
[17:18] Speaker 7: And you open that door.
[17:19] Speaker 6: I do.
[17:20] Speaker 7: And when you open that door, can you tell us
[17:22] Speaker 7: what you saw?
[17:40] Speaker 8: I saw my husband, I saw kay. I saw that
[17:49] Speaker 8: he was he was bleeding. I saw.
[17:59] Speaker 6: That he was in shock. His eyes were uh, I
[18:12] Speaker 6: can't even describe it.
[18:15] Speaker 9: Did you did you?
[18:16] Speaker 7: Were you able to tell if he was still alive
[18:18] Speaker 7: at that point?
[18:20] Speaker 6: He was still alive. His left leg was shaking up
[18:27] Speaker 6: and down. I tried to stop bleeding, so I had
[18:34] Speaker 6: my fingers in every wound that I could get to,
[18:39] Speaker 6: and I used my other hand to prop up his
[18:44] Speaker 6: neck cause he kept falling down and I wanted to
[18:49] Speaker 6: keep his airway as as open as it could. I
[18:55] Speaker 6: was trying to help him so that he could breathe
[18:58] Speaker 6: cause his lips were turning blue.
[19:00] Speaker 8: He was alive because I've felt his pulls when I
[19:03] Speaker 8: had my fingers.
[19:07] Speaker 6: He was alive.
[19:10] Speaker 3: Austin Thompson had already moved on the Noose River Greenway
[19:27] Speaker 3: trail ran alongside the Headingham neighborhood. It's a long paved
[19:32] Speaker 3: path through stretches of trees in open parkland that locals
[19:35] Speaker 3: used daily. Some of the houses backed onto the Greenway.
[19:40] Speaker 3: It runs about twenty seven miles along the river and
[19:44] Speaker 3: then connects to the state's Mountain to Sea Trail. On
[19:48] Speaker 3: an October evening, it was busy with the ordinary traffic
[19:51] Speaker 3: of people making the most of the fading daylight. Susan
[19:56] Speaker 3: Cornatz was forty nine years old and have been running
[19:59] Speaker 3: on that trail most evenings for years. Running wasn't just
[20:03] Speaker 3: a hobby for Susan. It was closer to a vocation.
[20:07] Speaker 3: She had completed the Boston Marathon four times. She'd run
[20:11] Speaker 3: forty three miles in a single endurance race and came
[20:14] Speaker 3: away frustrated that she hadn't done more. In twenty seventeen,
[20:19] Speaker 3: she set herself a goal of two thousand and seventeen
[20:21] Speaker 3: miles inside the calendar year and finished it with a
[20:25] Speaker 3: deay despair. The license played on the family minivan simply
[20:29] Speaker 3: read r U N N R, but the people who
[20:33] Speaker 3: knew Susan best didn't lead with any of that. When
[20:36] Speaker 3: they spoke about her, they talked about how she always
[20:40] Speaker 3: stopped on the trail to photograph there, how she would
[20:43] Speaker 3: move a snail off the path so other runners wouldn't
[20:46] Speaker 3: tread on it. How she left gallons of water along
[20:49] Speaker 3: the trail for a homeless man who lived nearby. Her
[20:53] Speaker 3: training partner said of her, you'd take that track face off,
[20:56] Speaker 3: and you find out what a light she is, what
[20:58] Speaker 3: a kind person. She'd been a school psychologist before stepping
[21:03] Speaker 3: back to homeschool. Her three sons, fourteen year old Malcolm,
[21:07] Speaker 3: thirteen year old Oliver, and ten year old Everett, they
[21:12] Speaker 3: had brought her joy. Her family said in a way
[21:15] Speaker 3: that her career hadn't quite managed. Her husband Tom described
[21:19] Speaker 3: her as a loving wife and a loving mother. That evening,
[21:23] Speaker 3: Susan had set out on a seven mile run. She
[21:27] Speaker 3: made it just over five miles. She was one point
[21:31] Speaker 3: nine miles short of her goal when Austin Thompson shot
[21:35] Speaker 3: her on the Greenway. She died there on the trail.
[21:52] Speaker 3: Mary Marshall was thirty four years old. She'd been born
[21:55] Speaker 3: in Pensacola, Florida, the younger of two daughters. Her family
[22:00] Speaker 3: had moved to Clayton in North Carolina when she was
[22:03] Speaker 3: in elementary school, and she graduated from Clayton High School
[22:07] Speaker 3: before enlisting in the Navy in two thousand and eight.
[22:11] Speaker 3: She served four years, was stationed in California, traveled to
[22:15] Speaker 3: Japan and across Asia, and left the military with the
[22:18] Speaker 3: intention of going to college. She studied pastry arts, but
[22:23] Speaker 3: then she built a different kind of career. She worked
[22:26] Speaker 3: as an office manager for a small chiropract practice in Raleigh,
[22:30] Speaker 3: where her sister said she had taken a struggling operation
[22:34] Speaker 3: and turned it into a thriving, multi provider clinic. She
[22:38] Speaker 3: was the hard and soul of that office, her sister,
[22:40] Speaker 3: Megan said. Her friend Donna Marshall remembered she loved to
[22:45] Speaker 3: go to the beach and she was an absolute fanatic
[22:48] Speaker 3: about Disney World. Mary had met her fiance Robert Stale
[22:53] Speaker 3: online during the COVID nineteen lockdown. They courted virtually for
[22:57] Speaker 3: months until it was safe to meet him per and
[23:00] Speaker 3: when they finally did, both families said it was obvious
[23:05] Speaker 3: they moved to heading him together. In two thousand and twenty,
[23:09] Speaker 3: rob described her as loud, opinionated, not afraid to say
[23:13] Speaker 3: exactly what she thought, and funny in the way that
[23:16] Speaker 3: makes other people funnier just by being nearby. He said
[23:20] Speaker 3: that the two and a half years he had with
[23:21] Speaker 3: her were the best two and a half years of
[23:24] Speaker 3: his life. They had planned a mountain wearing at a
[23:27] Speaker 3: rustic open air chapel in Waynesville, with cabins rented for guests,
[23:32] Speaker 3: and a Halloween fame pumpkins and autumn decorations and everything
[23:37] Speaker 3: that Mary loved about that time of the year. Their
[23:41] Speaker 3: wedding registry asked guests not for gifts, but for contributions
[23:45] Speaker 3: to their honeymoon. The date was set for the twenty
[23:49] Speaker 3: ninth of October twenty and twenty two, sixteen days away.
[23:55] Speaker 3: That evening, Mary's dog, Scruff, had slipped his collar and
[23:58] Speaker 3: got loose near the Greenway Trail. Mary went out to
[24:01] Speaker 3: find him. Scroff had effectively chosen Mary as his owner
[24:06] Speaker 3: when he sat on her lap at an animal shelter.
[24:10] Speaker 3: She had called Rob at work while she was looking
[24:12] Speaker 3: for the dog. She told him that Scroff got out,
[24:16] Speaker 3: that she could hear gunshots somewhere nearby, and asked him
[24:19] Speaker 3: to come home. That was the last conversation they had.
[24:24] Speaker 3: Austin had approached Mary and shot her in the head, neck,
[24:28] Speaker 3: and shoulders. He left her bleeding to death on the
[24:32] Speaker 3: Greenway trail. Scruff was unharmed, but huddled close to his
[24:37] Speaker 3: owner as she took her final breaths. The first call
[25:00] Speaker 3: Rawleigh's emergency communications center at five h nine pm multiple
[25:05] Speaker 3: shots fired near the golf course in Herringham. As dispatchers
[25:09] Speaker 3: were logging it and sending officers, more calls were already
[25:13] Speaker 3: coming in. By five twelve pm, a resident on Sahali
[25:17] Speaker 3: Way was on the line, telling a dispatcher that she
[25:20] Speaker 3: had heard shots and could see two people lying on
[25:23] Speaker 3: the ground, one by the porch, one by the bushes.
[25:28] Speaker 3: She didn't know who they were or what had happened.
[25:31] Speaker 3: Despatchers took a second call almost simultaneously from a man
[25:36] Speaker 3: on Osprey Cove Drive, just straights away. He said that
[25:40] Speaker 3: a police officer had been shot in the chest and
[25:42] Speaker 3: was bleeding. Someone had come through the neighborhood with a shotgun,
[25:46] Speaker 3: he said. The dispatcher told callers to get inside and
[25:51] Speaker 3: lock their front doors. If they saw a white male
[25:54] Speaker 3: in camouflage gear, call back immediately. Officers were on the
[25:59] Speaker 3: scene by five nineteen pm, seven minutes after the first
[26:03] Speaker 3: residential calls came in. What they found was a neighborhood
[26:08] Speaker 3: in chaos. Nicole Conners and Lynn Gardner were down on
[26:12] Speaker 3: Sahale Way. Nicole had sustained at least thirty four gunshot wounds,
[26:18] Speaker 3: including twenty five exit wounds. She had been shot on
[26:22] Speaker 3: her arms, breasts, back, and chest. Those bullets injured her spine, ribs,
[26:28] Speaker 3: left humorous, heart, lung, diaphragm, liver, stomach splain, and pankras.
[26:35] Speaker 3: Gabriel Torres was slumped in his personal vehicle on Osprey
[26:38] Speaker 3: Cove Drive and across multiple calls flooding in from residents.
[26:44] Speaker 3: A picture of the shooter was beginning to emerge, a
[26:48] Speaker 3: young white male camouflage clothing, a long gun running. One
[26:53] Speaker 3: witness who called nine one one, said that he looked
[26:57] Speaker 3: like a baby. Door bell footage captured him moving through
[27:02] Speaker 3: the neighborhood. Another neighbor snapped a photograph of him as
[27:06] Speaker 3: he crossed a field. He even approached one neighbor and
[27:11] Speaker 3: warned that there was somebody shooting. At five twenty one pm,
[27:25] Speaker 3: the first call came in from the Noose River Greenway.
[27:29] Speaker 3: A cyclist had been riding on the trail when he
[27:32] Speaker 3: came across a woman lying on the ground unconscious. He
[27:36] Speaker 3: got off his bike, stood there for a moment and
[27:39] Speaker 3: tried to process what he was saying. He called nine
[27:43] Speaker 3: one one.
[27:48] Speaker 10: I'm on news river Stream. I'm not sure that along
[27:57] Speaker 10: the trim know my type of page cause you're on
[28:01] Speaker 10: the trail. Yes, uh.
[28:06] Speaker 11: Yeah, it looks like there may be a sugar going on.
[28:09] Speaker 1: I'm hearing on one tech Okay.
[28:11] Speaker 11: Where are you looking? Boom?
[28:16] Speaker 10: I'm looking at my maps and it says around the
[28:18] Speaker 10: r Beington r Arbington, Uh lady trailhead okay. Eight said
[28:24] Speaker 10: there's a female down yes, uh okay, and she's a
[28:31] Speaker 10: lady right here.
[28:33] Speaker 12: Did you hear hear anything else?
[28:35] Speaker 13: Uh?
[28:36] Speaker 10: I just uh, I was riding about. It's two people
[28:38] Speaker 10: here that just got here with me, and I hear
[28:43] Speaker 10: like a lot of uh yeah, I'm on Oh my god.
[28:48] Speaker 12: H So what's calling on there?
[28:49] Speaker 10: Oh?
[28:50] Speaker 9: Okay?
[28:53] Speaker 8: Uh?
[28:54] Speaker 10: She is bleeding okay, and it's just one person. Yeah, man,
[29:00] Speaker 10: winter little dogs.
[29:02] Speaker 11: On the floor.
[29:04] Speaker 8: DC eight opposite there.
[29:08] Speaker 10: No man, let's see it like a lot of soeigns.
[29:09] Speaker 10: I'm not sure if they're coming here or trying to
[29:11] Speaker 10: figure out what's going on.
[29:14] Speaker 12: Okay, can you tell me exactly where you're at the
[29:16] Speaker 12: train how to break out?
[29:20] Speaker 10: There's a pension bridge?
[29:22] Speaker 6: What's that parking on?
[29:28] Speaker 10: I'm around day of Harbor Drive. He's my address.
[29:33] Speaker 3: Somebody else appeared on the trail and together they find
[29:36] Speaker 3: a second bolding.
[29:39] Speaker 10: Another person.
[29:43] Speaker 12: Around another partment.
[29:45] Speaker 10: Holy shit, i'might be another person. Okay, hold on, I'm
[29:52] Speaker 10: gonna run down there. Okay, hold on, hold on. Oh
[30:11] Speaker 10: it's another person. Is another They followed.
[30:15] Speaker 14: We gotta get up area, We got to get up.
[30:18] Speaker 10: The area should be around here.
[30:21] Speaker 3: Officers and emergency services were directed to the greenway.
[30:26] Speaker 11: MARKITI just made me aware that there is a female
[30:29] Speaker 11: pople coach seven on the trail with a gsw to
[30:31] Speaker 11: the head and two other patients. I need an EMS
[30:36] Speaker 11: unit here.
[30:37] Speaker 3: They find Mary Marshall and Susan Cornatt's. Both were pronounced
[30:42] Speaker 3: dead at the scene. Susan had sustained six gunshot wounds
[30:46] Speaker 3: to various parts of her body, including her head and neck.
[30:51] Speaker 3: In less than fifteen minutes, five people had been shot
[30:53] Speaker 3: across three separate locations. The calls kept coming. Residents were
[31:00] Speaker 3: a ordered hearing shots. People said they had seen him
[31:03] Speaker 3: running towards the woods. The neighborhood was locked on, roads blocked,
[31:08] Speaker 3: checkpoints established, residents told to stay inside and not open
[31:12] Speaker 3: their doors. Tracy Howard. Nicole Connor's husband had been running
[31:17] Speaker 3: errands when the shooting started. He came home to find
[31:21] Speaker 3: police checkpoints sailing off every approach to Sahali Way. He
[31:27] Speaker 3: was kept back while officers worked the scene where his
[31:30] Speaker 3: wife was lying dead. Tom Cornatts came home from work
[31:34] Speaker 3: to find a helicopter ove her head and police blocking
[31:37] Speaker 3: the roads. He texted Susan to ask if she wanted
[31:42] Speaker 3: him to come and pick her up from her run.
[31:45] Speaker 3: There was no response. Robstale was at work when his
[31:49] Speaker 3: phone rang. It was Mary calling to tell him that
[31:53] Speaker 3: Scruff had slipped his collar on the runway. She said
[31:57] Speaker 3: she heard gunshots and he needed to come home right away.
[32:01] Speaker 3: Less than ten minutes later, he said he had a
[32:03] Speaker 3: feeling that something was badly wrong. He tried calling her back,
[32:09] Speaker 3: It rang through the voicemail. He tried again, same thing.
[32:25] Speaker 3: As officers worked the streets in the Greenway, the investigation
[32:29] Speaker 3: was also moving inward. The shooting had begune at five
[32:32] Speaker 3: oh nine as far as dispatchers knew, but detectives were
[32:36] Speaker 3: quickly forming a picture that it had started earlier. Austin
[32:41] Speaker 3: Thompson was identified as the shooter and officers entered the
[32:45] Speaker 3: family's home. In one of the rooms, they found James Thompson.
[32:51] Speaker 4: He was dead.
[32:53] Speaker 3: Detectives obtained a search warrant for the Thompson home and
[32:57] Speaker 3: came across an arsenal of weapons, some of them were missing,
[33:02] Speaker 3: including Allen's nine millimeter handgun. As they were processing the house,
[33:07] Speaker 3: Austin's phone was still active. Records would later show that
[33:12] Speaker 3: during the shooting, he had called his father Alan at work.
[33:17] Speaker 3: Allan later said his son didn't seem angry or agitated.
[33:21] Speaker 3: He hadn't seemed upset. By the point that call was made,
[33:26] Speaker 3: James was almost certainly already dead. Detectives also began pulling
[33:31] Speaker 3: Austin's search history while they tried to track him down.
[33:35] Speaker 3: In the weeks leading up to October thirteenth, he had
[33:38] Speaker 3: been searching extensively online school shootings, mass casualty events, active
[33:44] Speaker 3: shooter tactics. He had pulled up photographs of Knightsdale High School.
[33:51] Speaker 3: He had searched whether juveniles could face the death penalty.
[33:55] Speaker 3: Within a thousand searches in total, covering guns, ammunition, while
[34:00] Speaker 3: making materials, assaults, and murders. The searches had been running
[34:06] Speaker 3: for months, yet none of it had been visible to
[34:09] Speaker 3: the people he lived with. Austin Thompson had been moving
[34:21] Speaker 3: since he left the house after the shootings on Sahale
[34:25] Speaker 3: Way and Ausbury Cove Drive. He had pushed towards the Greenway,
[34:29] Speaker 3: killed two more people, and then kept moving. Footage captured
[34:33] Speaker 3: on surveillance cameras showed him walking through the neighborhood's streets
[34:37] Speaker 3: with his weapon, pausing, taking aim, and then moving on.
[34:42] Speaker 3: By the time officers had a full picture of the scene,
[34:45] Speaker 3: he was already gone into the streets beyond heading him
[34:49] Speaker 3: working his way away from the neighborhood. At six twelve
[34:53] Speaker 3: p m. He was spotted running into woodland near Torheil
[34:57] Speaker 3: Club Road, roughly two miles from the family home. Officers
[35:02] Speaker 3: including K nine units, were deployed, State, local, and federal
[35:06] Speaker 3: agencies were drawn in a large scale manhunt was underway
[35:10] Speaker 3: across the eastern edges of Raleigh, with aerial support overhead
[35:15] Speaker 3: and road closures extending outward from having him in every direction.
[35:20] Speaker 3: The search lasted for ours. The neighborhood sat in lockdown
[35:24] Speaker 3: as darkness fell, residents behind locked doors, streets, empty blue
[35:30] Speaker 3: lights rotating at every checkpoint. North Carolina's governor called it
[35:36] Speaker 3: the nightmare of every community. At six forty two pm,
[35:40] Speaker 3: as officers were searching an area near McConnell Oliver Drive,
[35:45] Speaker 3: Austin opened fire on them from inside one of the
[35:47] Speaker 3: two barn like outbuildings. Two minutes later, Raleigh Police Officer
[35:53] Speaker 3: Casey Clark was shot in both knees and went down.
[35:58] Speaker 3: Two officers, Sergeant K. M. Smith and Officer D. M. Garner,
[36:02] Speaker 3: returned fire towards the building, twenty three rounds in total,
[36:06] Speaker 3: providing cover. While Clark was pulled to safety. A perimeter
[36:11] Speaker 3: was established around the structure. Negotiators called on Austin to
[36:16] Speaker 3: come out to put down his weapons to surrender. A
[36:20] Speaker 3: nine one one caller reported that the suspect might also
[36:23] Speaker 3: have hand grenades. Austin refused to come out for almost
[36:29] Speaker 3: three hours, officers held the perimeter. Members of the Selective
[36:34] Speaker 3: Enforcement Unit used tactical equipment to establish exactly where inside
[36:39] Speaker 3: the building Austin was and what weapons he had on him.
[36:44] Speaker 3: At nine thirty four pm, four RS, twenty four minutes
[36:47] Speaker 3: after the first nine one one call, f EU officers
[36:51] Speaker 3: moved in. They found Austin Thompson lying on the ground
[36:55] Speaker 3: near the entrance to the building. He had a gunshot
[36:59] Speaker 3: wound to the head. A handgun was in his waistband,
[37:04] Speaker 3: A shotgun and shotgun shells were on the ground around him.
[37:08] Speaker 3: A sheath on his belt was empty. The hunting knife
[37:11] Speaker 3: had been thrown outside. His backpack was still with him.
[37:16] Speaker 3: He was handcuffed at nine thirty six pm and transported
[37:20] Speaker 3: to hospital, where he was admitted to the pediatric ICU
[37:24] Speaker 3: and critical condition. He had committed the twenty fifth mass
[37:28] Speaker 3: killing in the United States in twenty twenty two, in
[37:32] Speaker 3: which the victims were fatally shot. Five people were dead,
[37:56] Speaker 3: two more were alive, but only just Lynn Gardner was
[38:00] Speaker 3: in critical condition. In the days that followed, her family
[38:04] Speaker 3: barely left her side. With each day that passed, Lynn
[38:09] Speaker 3: got stronger. She was in the ICU on a ventilator.
[38:14] Speaker 3: She needed surgery to her jaw and stomach, but Lynn survived.
[38:19] Speaker 3: When she was finally discharged, she was wearing a T
[38:22] Speaker 3: shirt that read today is My Day. She went home
[38:26] Speaker 3: to continue physical and occupational therapy. She still had issues
[38:31] Speaker 3: with her hearing. She still needed a support dog. What
[38:35] Speaker 3: she had been through permanently changed her life. Casey Clark
[38:40] Speaker 3: was the other survivor. He was a thirty three year
[38:43] Speaker 3: old Raleigh police officer who had been shot in both knees.
[38:47] Speaker 3: He was traded and released from hospital the same night.
[38:52] Speaker 3: When Friday came, Headingham was a different neighborhood. The roads
[38:56] Speaker 3: that had been sealed off the previous evening were still
[38:59] Speaker 3: marked by checkpoints and crime scene tape. Police Chief of
[39:03] Speaker 3: Stella Patterson held a press conference and identified the victims
[39:08] Speaker 3: of the shooter. He said, we mourn and share the
[39:12] Speaker 3: loss of not only our officer, but all the victims
[39:16] Speaker 3: of this senseless gun crime. The neighborhood entrance, a low
[39:21] Speaker 3: brick wall with the name having him picked out in
[39:23] Speaker 3: gold lettering, had already become a makeshift memorial. People left
[39:28] Speaker 3: on flowers, candles, photographs of the victims. North Carolina Governor
[39:34] Speaker 3: Roy Cooper ordered all flags across the state to be
[39:38] Speaker 3: flown at half staff. The night terror had reached their doorstep,
[39:42] Speaker 3: He said, the nightmare of every community had come to Raleigh.
[39:48] Speaker 3: President Joe Biden issued a statement he renewed his calls
[39:52] Speaker 3: for a ban on assault weapons, stating, enough, we've graved
[39:57] Speaker 3: and prayed with too many families who have had to
[40:00] Speaker 3: bear the terrible burden of these mass shootings. We must
[40:03] Speaker 3: pass an assault weaponspan. Local and state lawmakers sent condolences.
[40:09] Speaker 3: The Raleigh Police Department established a memorial for Gabriel Torress
[40:13] Speaker 3: the municipal building and set up an email address for
[40:16] Speaker 3: people who wanted to support his family. Two days after
[40:21] Speaker 3: the shooting, on the Saturday evening, a round two hundred
[40:24] Speaker 3: community members gathered at the Hedingham Clubhouse. It was the
[40:28] Speaker 3: same venue where a fall festival had been planned for weeks.
[40:32] Speaker 3: The decorations had already been ordered, the event already advertised. Instead,
[40:38] Speaker 3: residents arrived with candles and stood in the car park
[40:42] Speaker 3: in silence. Five portraits of the victims were erected inside
[40:48] Speaker 3: Chaplains from the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team were there,
[40:52] Speaker 3: sitting with whoever needed to talk. A therapy dog named
[40:56] Speaker 3: Solomon moved through the crowd. At the end of the vigil,
[41:00] Speaker 3: people locked arms. One resident, DeVante Godfrey, had been out
[41:05] Speaker 3: of town when he heard the news and rushed back home.
[41:09] Speaker 3: He said that nothing in his neighborhood was the same.
[41:13] Speaker 3: Another local, Woodword Grass, said the shooting highlighted the need
[41:16] Speaker 3: for policies to keep guns out of the hands of juveniles.
[41:20] Speaker 3: He said, why would a kid have a gun like
[41:23] Speaker 3: that that he could cause that many deaths. Amy Huller,
[41:27] Speaker 3: whose husband had been at home when the shooting started,
[41:30] Speaker 3: said she had called him and told him to close
[41:32] Speaker 3: the garage and lock the door. She said they were
[41:36] Speaker 3: all just in shock. She said she thought it brought
[41:39] Speaker 3: them all closer together. That Sunday, at First Alliance Church,
[41:44] Speaker 3: a few miles from Herdingham, about twenty five people gathered
[41:48] Speaker 3: outside for a prayer vigil. The pastor, Dan Rothraw, said
[41:53] Speaker 3: it was a time of deep distress that he had
[41:55] Speaker 3: never known in all of his memory. He said they
[41:59] Speaker 3: just loved their names and cared about their neighbors. The
[42:03] Speaker 3: church had spent years giving produce to residents on Saturday
[42:06] Speaker 3: mornings and offering to pray for people. Now the prayers
[42:11] Speaker 3: were for five people who would never be coming back.
[42:15] Speaker 3: On the twenty third of October, the city of Raleigh
[42:18] Speaker 3: held a larger community vigil, hosted in partnership with the
[42:22] Speaker 3: NAACP and Mom's Demand Action, led by a group of
[42:27] Speaker 3: inter faith community leaders. People filled the room and prayers
[42:31] Speaker 3: were offered for the victims, for the families, for Hedingham,
[42:36] Speaker 3: and for Raleigh. A chaplain from WakeMed's Spiritual Care department,
[42:41] Speaker 3: who had been on duty the night of the shooting,
[42:44] Speaker 3: later said he remembered leaving the hospital that night feeling
[42:47] Speaker 3: emotionally numb. He said it had been the beginning of
[42:51] Speaker 3: a long, long night filled with emotion. James Thompson's celebration
[42:57] Speaker 3: of life was held on the evening of the twentieth
[42:59] Speaker 3: of October at Trinity Baptist Church. The service was led
[43:04] Speaker 3: by doctor Jeff Roberts, who stood before a congregation still
[43:08] Speaker 3: trying to absorb what had happened a week earlier. He said,
[43:12] Speaker 3: in these moments, we try to make sense of what
[43:14] Speaker 3: doesn't make sense. We try to comprehend that which is incomprehensible.
[43:20] Speaker 3: We have all kinds of questions, normal questions, because we
[43:24] Speaker 3: believe if we could just get some answers to some questions,
[43:28] Speaker 3: we would be able to somehow process that which makes
[43:31] Speaker 3: no sense to us. It gives us a little bit
[43:34] Speaker 3: of sense of control if we could just have some
[43:36] Speaker 3: of those answers. Austin wasn't mentioned by name during the service,
[43:42] Speaker 3: but a video that played silently on the screen behind
[43:45] Speaker 3: the pulpit featured many family photographs, and he was in them.
[43:50] Speaker 3: The two brothers together the way they had always been
[43:54] Speaker 3: before any of this happened. His family asked that in
[43:58] Speaker 3: laua Flor's donations be made to Trinity's upward basketball program.
[44:03] Speaker 3: James would have turned seventeen in January. The funerals that
[44:07] Speaker 3: followed came one after the other across the days that followed.
[44:12] Speaker 3: Gabriel's visitation was held on the evening of the twenty
[44:14] Speaker 3: first of October at Mitchell Funeral Home, and his funeral
[44:19] Speaker 3: the following morning across Assembly Church. His coffin was carried
[44:24] Speaker 3: through the straits of Raleigh, flanked by officers from the
[44:27] Speaker 3: police department. He had served for less than two years.
[44:32] Speaker 3: He had been a United States Marine before he was
[44:35] Speaker 3: a Raleigh police officer, and at the service, the Marines
[44:38] Speaker 3: folded the American flag that had been draped over his
[44:41] Speaker 3: coffin and presented it to his family. Jasmine stood up
[44:46] Speaker 3: to speak about her husband. She addressed him directly and said,
[44:52] Speaker 3: I'm glad you were still with me long enough so
[44:54] Speaker 3: that I could kiss your skin while it was still warm,
[44:58] Speaker 3: while I could still feel the pulse of your heart.
[45:02] Speaker 3: She described finding him the pain of it. She said
[45:06] Speaker 3: that it was a pain too hard to deal with.
[45:09] Speaker 3: She said, I gave my all to try and save you.
[45:13] Speaker 3: I'm sorry if I scared you. I didn't know I
[45:16] Speaker 3: could scream that loud. After the service in Raleigh, Gabriel
[45:21] Speaker 3: was taken home to New Jersey, where a massive Christian
[45:24] Speaker 3: burial was held at Saint Stephen's Catholic Church in Kearney,
[45:28] Speaker 3: the town where he had grown up. He was then
[45:31] Speaker 3: buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington. Not long
[45:36] Speaker 3: after the Marines folded Gabriel's flag. Mourners gathered across the
[45:40] Speaker 3: city at North Raleigh Presbyterian Church for Susan's celebration of life.
[45:46] Speaker 3: Pastor Lisa Habecker led the service. She spoke about what
[45:52] Speaker 3: Susan's life had meant and what it might still mean
[45:55] Speaker 3: now that it's over. She said, I am sure that
[45:59] Speaker 3: this circumstances surrounding Sue's death teach us that the world
[46:03] Speaker 3: still has an awful lot to learn about love. The
[46:07] Speaker 3: running community's tribute was already well under way by the
[46:10] Speaker 3: time her family gathered to say goodbye. Hundreds of runners
[46:15] Speaker 3: in North Carolina, across the country, and across the world
[46:19] Speaker 3: had taken to trails and roads in the day since
[46:21] Speaker 3: October thirteenth, they logged miles in Susan's name, some running
[46:27] Speaker 3: one point nine miles to finish the distance she hadn't,
[46:30] Speaker 3: some running five point one miles to honor what she
[46:33] Speaker 3: had already covered, some running the full. Seven photographs arrived
[46:39] Speaker 3: from places Susan had never been, posted with the hashtag
[46:44] Speaker 3: run for Sue. Her family asked that donations be made
[46:48] Speaker 3: to causes that she loved, including helping animals and encouraging
[46:52] Speaker 3: children to read. Mary's memorial service was held on the
[46:57] Speaker 3: twenty ninth of October, was the date that had been
[47:00] Speaker 3: set for months for her wedding the Mountain Chapel in Waynesville,
[47:06] Speaker 3: where she and Robert had planned to be married. The
[47:09] Speaker 3: cabins booked for guests, the Halloween decorations, the pumpkins. None
[47:15] Speaker 3: of that happened. Instead, the people who had been invited
[47:19] Speaker 3: to celebrate her marriage gathered to mourn her. Rob Stale
[47:23] Speaker 3: said that this woman had been his everything. He said
[47:27] Speaker 3: she had meant so much to him, and to her
[47:29] Speaker 3: parents and to her sister Megan. A gofund me set
[47:34] Speaker 3: up to cover the cost of her memorial had raised
[47:36] Speaker 3: more than twelve thousand dollars in its first days, Nicole's husband, Tracy,
[47:43] Speaker 3: held a private service for his wife of five years.
[47:47] Speaker 3: He called her a beautiful soul. He said she always
[47:50] Speaker 3: looked out for other people. He said she always made
[47:53] Speaker 3: sure he went to his doctor's appointments. Five funerals across
[47:58] Speaker 3: nine days of people trying to find somewhere to put
[48:02] Speaker 3: what had happened to them, and in a hospital bed
[48:06] Speaker 3: across the city, Austin Thompson was still alive, his conditions
[48:11] Speaker 3: slowly improving with each day that passed. Alan and Elise
[48:33] Speaker 3: Thompson had lost both of their sons on the same evening.
[48:37] Speaker 3: One was dead, the other was in hospital. They released
[48:42] Speaker 3: their first public statement six days after the murders through
[48:46] Speaker 3: their attorneys. They said that words couldn't begin to describe
[48:50] Speaker 3: their anguish and sorrow. They said their son Austin had
[48:54] Speaker 3: inflicted a measurable pain on the Raleigh community and that
[48:57] Speaker 3: they were overcome with grief for the innocent lives that
[49:00] Speaker 3: had been lost. They named each of the victims Nicole Connors,
[49:05] Speaker 3: Susan Cornad's, Mary Marshall, Gabriel Torres, and said that they
[49:10] Speaker 3: mourned the loss of their son James. They said they
[49:14] Speaker 3: prayed that Lynn and Casey Clark would fully recover. And
[49:19] Speaker 3: then they said there were never any indications or warning
[49:23] Speaker 3: signs that Austin was capable of doing anything like this.
[49:27] Speaker 3: They had so many unanswered questions. They said they would
[49:31] Speaker 3: fully cooperate with law enforcement. They wanted to help detectives
[49:35] Speaker 3: understand why and how it happened. Alice reaching Out separately
[49:41] Speaker 3: said that Austin was showing some signs of improvement. He
[49:44] Speaker 3: had been moved from critical condition to the pediatric ICU
[49:48] Speaker 3: at WakeMed. She said his condition had stabilized. She declined
[49:54] Speaker 3: to say anything further. Detectives were already building their case
[49:58] Speaker 3: against Austin. Under North Carolina law, crimes committed by fifteen
[50:03] Speaker 3: year olds are usually adjudicated in juvenile court. However, the
[50:08] Speaker 3: Wake County District Attorney, Lauren Freeman, had made clear within
[50:12] Speaker 3: days of the shooting that her office intended to charge
[50:15] Speaker 3: Austin as an adult. The question of why he had
[50:19] Speaker 3: done it, why he had killed his brother, why he
[50:22] Speaker 3: had walked out into the neighborhood he had grown up
[50:25] Speaker 3: in and shot strangers, had no answer. The note he
[50:30] Speaker 3: had left on to Halley Way had said almost nothing
[50:34] Speaker 3: useful At the top of the page, he had written,
[50:38] Speaker 3: I did this because I hate humans. That was all
[50:42] Speaker 3: anybody had. Austin Thompson was in a hospital bed at
[50:54] Speaker 3: WakeMed under round the clock guard. Raleigh police officers monitored
[50:59] Speaker 3: him twenty four hours a day. By late October, sources
[51:03] Speaker 3: told local media that Austin had become physical rehabilitation. On
[51:08] Speaker 3: the tenth of November, he was moved from WakeMed to
[51:11] Speaker 3: a rehabilitation facility. Three days later, he was transferred to
[51:16] Speaker 3: the Wake County Juvenile Detention Center, where he remained in
[51:20] Speaker 3: the juvenile justice system pending a probable cause hearing. The
[51:26] Speaker 3: months continued to pass, the legal process moved slowly. In
[51:31] Speaker 3: October of twenty twenty three, a full year after the shooting,
[51:35] Speaker 3: a Wake County Superior Court judge ruled that Austin Thompson
[51:39] Speaker 3: would be tried as an adult. He was sixteen by then.
[51:44] Speaker 3: He was charged with five counts of first degree murder,
[51:47] Speaker 3: two counts of attempted murderer, two counts of assault with
[51:50] Speaker 3: a deadly weapon with intent to kill, and one count
[51:53] Speaker 3: of assault with a firearm on a law enforcement officer.
[51:58] Speaker 3: Those charges carried the passe ability of life in prison
[52:01] Speaker 3: without parole. A trial date was eventually set for February
[52:05] Speaker 3: two thousand and twenty six. But Austin wasn't the only
[52:10] Speaker 3: Thompson who found himself in legal trouble. His father, Allan,
[52:15] Speaker 3: was charged with a misdemeanor for storing a firearm in
[52:18] Speaker 3: a manner accessible to a minor. He had kept a
[52:21] Speaker 3: nine milimeter handgun kept in an unlocked box on the
[52:25] Speaker 3: bedside table. In September twenty twenty four, he appeared in
[52:30] Speaker 3: court and pleaded guilty. The judge handed Alan a forty
[52:34] Speaker 3: five days suspended jail sentence and a year of unsupervised probation.
[52:40] Speaker 3: He called the matter a case of epic tragedy. Allan's
[52:44] Speaker 3: attorney said that there were no warning signs that Austin
[52:47] Speaker 3: would commit violence. Russell bab said, as a parent, Alan
[52:52] Speaker 3: is living the unthinkable. He's lost both his sons and
[52:55] Speaker 3: still doesn't know why this happened. He said that Austin
[52:59] Speaker 3: spoke to his father on the phone in the moments
[53:02] Speaker 3: leading up to and after the mass shooting. Alan was
[53:07] Speaker 3: speaking to his son as he drove home from work.
[53:10] Speaker 3: He asked if he needed anything when he stopped to
[53:12] Speaker 3: get some milk. As Alan got closer to the neighborhood,
[53:16] Speaker 3: he saw police cars everywhere. He called Austin again and
[53:21] Speaker 3: told him to Hunger down. He had no clue his
[53:24] Speaker 3: son was the one committing the murders. Alan wiped tears
[53:29] Speaker 3: from his eyes as the proceedings concluded and said nothing publicly.
[53:35] Speaker 3: The rest of the families were grieving as well. Robert Steele,
[53:39] Speaker 3: Mary's fiance, spoke publicly about where he was. He said
[53:43] Speaker 3: he had been channeling his grief into something deliberate. He
[53:47] Speaker 3: had been meeting with lawmakers, attending hearings pushing for changes
[53:51] Speaker 3: to gun legislation, specifically around how easily a miner could
[53:55] Speaker 3: gain access to a weapon stored in a family home.
[53:59] Speaker 3: He said, six months have gone by fast, but each
[54:03] Speaker 3: day has dragged. He said he was determined to make
[54:06] Speaker 3: a change. He had met with dozens of elected officials
[54:10] Speaker 3: and put forward a straightforward position. If a gun owner
[54:14] Speaker 3: allowed a miner to access a weapon and that miner
[54:18] Speaker 3: committed a crime with it, the gun owner should be
[54:20] Speaker 3: held accountable in a meaningful way. He remarked, some of
[54:25] Speaker 3: our elected representatives don't care about us in the way
[54:28] Speaker 3: we need to be cared for. They don't understand what
[54:31] Speaker 3: it's like to struggle every day. He said he wanted
[54:35] Speaker 3: to make sure that no other person felt the way
[54:37] Speaker 3: he was failing, and while he waited for legal change
[54:40] Speaker 3: that was not coming quickly enough, he was finding his
[54:43] Speaker 3: own ways to get through the day. He said, when
[54:47] Speaker 3: I'm really missing her, I go outside and I pick
[54:50] Speaker 3: a star and I just tell her about my day.
[54:54] Speaker 3: On the one year anniversary, survivor Lynne spoke with the media.
[54:59] Speaker 3: She said, even though I went through these circumstances, I'm
[55:03] Speaker 3: not broken. Lynn revealed that she was struck in the arm,
[55:07] Speaker 3: on the left side, on the face, on the torso,
[55:10] Speaker 3: and right thigh. She said she didn't remember much about
[55:14] Speaker 3: that day, but that she didn't ask many questions about
[55:17] Speaker 3: it either. She said part of moving forward had been
[55:21] Speaker 3: finding her own pace and forgiveness. She said, when I
[55:26] Speaker 3: forgave Austin, I forgave Austin because I wanted to protect
[55:31] Speaker 3: my peace. Two years after the shooting, on the fourth
[55:42] Speaker 3: of October twenty twenty four, the survivors and the families
[55:45] Speaker 3: of the victims filed a civil lawsuit in Wake County
[55:49] Speaker 3: Superior Court. It named five defendants, Austin Thompson, his parents,
[55:55] Speaker 3: Alan and Lease, the Headingham Community Association, the party management
[56:00] Speaker 3: company that oversaw the hoa's daily operations, and Capital Special Police,
[56:07] Speaker 3: the private law enforcement agency contracted to patrol Heatingham. The
[56:12] Speaker 3: lawsuit ran one hundred and sixty two pages, and what
[56:16] Speaker 3: it contained went far beyond the events of October thirteenth.
[56:21] Speaker 3: It alleged that Austin Thompson had not been an unknown
[56:25] Speaker 3: quantity in the neighborhood. It alleged that people had seen something,
[56:30] Speaker 3: had said something, and that nothing had been done. According
[56:35] Speaker 3: to the filing, residents had reported Austin to the HOA
[56:38] Speaker 3: on multiple occasions in the period before the shooting. There
[56:43] Speaker 3: had been at least two separate incidents in which he
[56:46] Speaker 3: had directed racial slurs at neighbours. Others had reported him
[56:51] Speaker 3: as aggressive, creepy, and off. The complaints had been logged,
[56:56] Speaker 3: the HOA had been made aware. Capital Special Police, whose
[57:01] Speaker 3: officer was on judy on the evening of October thirteenth,
[57:04] Speaker 3: had been made aware. One of the most strigging details
[57:08] Speaker 3: in the lawsuit concerned a neighbor who had seen Austin
[57:11] Speaker 3: in the days immediately before the shooting. He had been
[57:15] Speaker 3: walking through the neighborhood carrying a large backpack. The neighborhood
[57:20] Speaker 3: reported what they saw as suspicious behavior, and they noted
[57:24] Speaker 3: that the path Austin was walking that day was the
[57:27] Speaker 3: same path he took on October thirteenth. The lawsuit alleged
[57:31] Speaker 3: that Austin also had specific prior run ins with Nicole Conners,
[57:36] Speaker 3: who lived just doors away from the Thompson family. She
[57:40] Speaker 3: had complained about him before. Nicole was shot thirty four times,
[57:45] Speaker 3: far more than any of the other victims. She was
[57:48] Speaker 3: also a black woman. One neighbor stated in the lawsuit,
[57:53] Speaker 3: whenever he would go looking for trouble and get into
[57:56] Speaker 3: it with people in the neighborhood, he seemed to pick
[57:58] Speaker 3: on women, especially. The filing accused Alan and Elise of
[58:03] Speaker 3: knowing about their son's history of anti social, racist, aggressive
[58:08] Speaker 3: and violent comments and behaviors, and of nevertheless allowing him
[58:13] Speaker 3: unfettered access to what it described as an arsenal of
[58:17] Speaker 3: unsecured weapons. It accused the HA and Capital Special Police
[58:22] Speaker 3: of having been explicitly told by residents that they had
[58:26] Speaker 3: a responsibility to address crime and threatening behavior in the neighborhood,
[58:30] Speaker 3: and of having failed to act on the warnings. They
[58:33] Speaker 3: received the HOA moved to have the case against it dismissed,
[58:38] Speaker 3: arguing that the locations where the shootings had taken place,
[58:42] Speaker 3: the Thompson home, the public streets, the Greenway trail were
[58:45] Speaker 3: not property it managed or controlled. Capital Special Police made
[58:50] Speaker 3: similar arguments. The officer on duty that evening, the lawsuit noted,
[58:56] Speaker 3: had reportedly been unaware that anything was happening until residence
[59:00] Speaker 3: had flagged her down. She had arrived at work just
[59:03] Speaker 3: before five pm. After she was flagged on, she tended
[59:07] Speaker 3: to Gabriel as police arrived on the scene and took over.
[59:11] Speaker 3: The civil case was still working its way through the courts,
[59:14] Speaker 3: as the criminal proceedings against Austin were also moving through
[59:18] Speaker 3: the courts. As the trial date in February twenty twenty
[59:33] Speaker 3: six approached, Austin's defense team spent months filing pre trial motions.
[59:39] Speaker 3: They stated they were going to use a defense of
[59:42] Speaker 3: diminished capacity and voluntary intoxication due to therapeutic doses of
[59:47] Speaker 3: prescribed medication for acne. They were also attempting to limit
[59:52] Speaker 3: what testimony and evidence could be presented. They argued that
[59:56] Speaker 3: statements Austin had made to police should be inadmissible on
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: the grounds that he had been medicated, brain injured, and
[1:00:03] Speaker 3: under constant surveillance when he made them. The details of
[1:00:07] Speaker 3: what he said were never made public. They also argued
[1:00:11] Speaker 3: that the brain damage he had sustained from the gunshot
[1:00:14] Speaker 3: wound to his head had left him unable to fully
[1:00:16] Speaker 3: explain his own actions to the court or to anyone else.
[1:00:22] Speaker 3: On the eleventh of January twenty twenty six, just weeks
[1:00:26] Speaker 3: before the scheduled trial, Austin suffered a seizure that his
[1:00:30] Speaker 3: lawyers attributed to the stress of the upcoming proceedings. Then,
[1:00:35] Speaker 3: on the twentieth of January, his attorneys announced that Austin
[1:00:39] Speaker 3: Thompson intended to plead guilty to all of the charges.
[1:00:44] Speaker 3: In a court filing, they wrote that while the brain
[1:00:46] Speaker 3: injury he had suffered had made it such that Austin
[1:00:49] Speaker 3: couldn't explain why he committed the shooting, he had always
[1:00:53] Speaker 3: accepted that he had done it. He recognized, they said,
[1:00:57] Speaker 3: with deep pain, the suffering he had caused the victim's
[1:01:01] Speaker 3: families and his own family. He had decided he wished
[1:01:05] Speaker 3: to save the community and the victims from as much
[1:01:07] Speaker 3: additional trauma as possible. The filing read in part. Austin
[1:01:13] Speaker 3: understands he can never change what happened, but he hopes
[1:01:16] Speaker 3: that Plating is charged and moving into a sentencing hearing
[1:01:20] Speaker 3: only will allow for the victims, the community, and his
[1:01:23] Speaker 3: family to be spared a trial. For Rob Steele, who
[1:01:27] Speaker 3: had spent more than three years carrying what had happened
[1:01:29] Speaker 3: to Mary, the news was something close to relief, he
[1:01:34] Speaker 3: said him. Pleading guilty saves a lot of time and
[1:01:37] Speaker 3: brings closure. It saves a trial. On the twenty first
[1:01:42] Speaker 3: of January twenty twenty six, eighteen year old Austin Thompson,
[1:01:47] Speaker 3: wearing a quarter zip sweater and slacks, stood in Wake
[1:01:50] Speaker 3: County Superior Court before Judge Paul Ridgeway and entered his place.
[1:01:56] Speaker 3: He offered almost no words of his own while the
[1:01:59] Speaker 3: judge questioned him. He signed the documents. He pleaded guilty
[1:02:03] Speaker 3: to all ten counts. No play agreement had been reached
[1:02:07] Speaker 3: with prosecutors. The sentencing hearing began on the third of
[1:02:11] Speaker 3: February twenty twenty six. It would last almost two weeks,
[1:02:16] Speaker 3: spread across seven days of testimony, evidence and argument. Because
[1:02:22] Speaker 3: Austin had been fifteen at the time of the shooting,
[1:02:25] Speaker 3: the death penalty was off the table. What Judge Paul
[1:02:28] Speaker 3: Ridgeway had to decide was whether Austin would spend the
[1:02:32] Speaker 3: rest of his life in prison without any possibility of parole,
[1:02:35] Speaker 3: or whether he would one day have the chance to
[1:02:38] Speaker 3: go before a parole board. It was, in legal terms,
[1:02:42] Speaker 3: a Miller hearing, a process established by the Supreme Court
[1:02:47] Speaker 3: requiring courts to consider the particular circumstances of juvenile offenders
[1:02:52] Speaker 3: before imposing the harshest available sentence. The courtroom filled on
[1:02:57] Speaker 3: that first morning with the people who had been living
[1:03:00] Speaker 3: with October thirteenth for more than three years. Jasmine Torres
[1:03:04] Speaker 3: was there, Tom Cornat's was there, Robert Steele was there.
[1:03:09] Speaker 3: Jenny Marshall, Mary's mother was there. Tracy Howard, who would
[1:03:13] Speaker 3: attend every single day of the hearing, was there. Alan
[1:03:17] Speaker 3: and Leise Thompson sat in the gallery and waited for
[1:03:20] Speaker 3: their son to be brought in Austin Thompson took his
[1:03:23] Speaker 3: seat at the defense table. He kept his head down
[1:03:27] Speaker 3: for much of what followed. The state opened by calling
[1:03:39] Speaker 3: its witnesses through the events of October thirteenth, laying out
[1:03:43] Speaker 3: for the court methodically and in full what Austin had
[1:03:46] Speaker 3: done and how he had done it. Lynn Gardner was
[1:03:50] Speaker 3: the first one to take the stand. She had survived,
[1:03:54] Speaker 3: though barely, and what she described in court was the
[1:03:57] Speaker 3: moment that had split her life into before and after.
[1:04:02] Speaker 3: She described seeing somebody to the side of her and
[1:04:05] Speaker 3: Nicole Corners.
[1:04:06] Speaker 7: Well, I did.
[1:04:07] Speaker 1: Notice that the person standing next to me had on
[1:04:10] Speaker 1: black camel pants.
[1:04:11] Speaker 9: Camo is in camouflage, right, And is that the only
[1:04:16] Speaker 9: thing that stood.
[1:04:16] Speaker 7: Out to you at it?
[1:04:19] Speaker 1: Yes, that's it stood out to me.
[1:04:20] Speaker 7: I don't know why, but it just did.
[1:04:22] Speaker 4: Okay.
[1:04:23] Speaker 9: And while you're standing there, what if anything happened after
[1:04:28] Speaker 9: you saw this person with the black camouflage.
[1:04:31] Speaker 7: Well, I noted that.
[1:04:35] Speaker 1: I hear this, this my rendition of what I heard
[1:04:38] Speaker 1: with bang bang bang, And then I heard Nicole say,
[1:04:42] Speaker 1: why are you shooting us?
[1:04:44] Speaker 9: And did you see the person that was that Nicole referred.
[1:04:49] Speaker 7: To as shooting you?
[1:04:50] Speaker 8: No?
[1:04:50] Speaker 9: Okay, when you heard the bang bang bang, did you
[1:04:55] Speaker 9: feel anything?
[1:04:56] Speaker 4: No?
[1:04:57] Speaker 7: What happened to you? What did you do when you
[1:04:59] Speaker 7: heard that?
[1:05:00] Speaker 8: Well?
[1:05:00] Speaker 1: I noticed that I'm no longer looking at Nicole's door,
[1:05:03] Speaker 1: I'm looking at the back to sky, okay. And as
[1:05:06] Speaker 1: I'm looking at the sky, I'm talking to myself like
[1:05:08] Speaker 1: I'm talking to you. Well, I am not looking at
[1:05:10] Speaker 1: back the sky, so I'm surveying my surroundings. I'm looking
[1:05:14] Speaker 1: left and right. And then I looked down at my
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: body and saw that I'm lying in a pool of
[1:05:19] Speaker 1: bloody So for me, immediately I went to prayer our
[1:05:24] Speaker 1: a father. If it's your willing, your way to take
[1:05:27] Speaker 1: me home, I'm ready. But if it is not your willing,
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: your way to take me home, send me your strength
[1:05:31] Speaker 1: and some help.
[1:05:33] Speaker 3: When she woke in the hospital, she was told that
[1:05:36] Speaker 3: Nichole was gone. She said, I was numb. I couldn't
[1:05:41] Speaker 3: comprehend that my friend was dead. Tracy Howard followed her
[1:05:45] Speaker 3: to the stunt. He had been running errands when the
[1:05:48] Speaker 3: shooting started. He remembered finding his wife, Sammy, and Lynden.
[1:05:57] Speaker 2: All right, you know, I pulled up the street, pulled,
[1:06:15] Speaker 2: I put it in the driveway. I seen the car,
[1:06:22] Speaker 2: I mean laning laying on the sidewalk. I couldn't right
[1:06:27] Speaker 2: and recognize her at first, so I turned up a
[1:06:32] Speaker 2: running the house to to get in the cold to
[1:06:34] Speaker 2: see if she knew what was going on. But sh
[1:06:37] Speaker 2: as soon as I turned towards the door. I seen
[1:06:39] Speaker 2: Sammy laying in and where was she was bleeding? Where
[1:06:43] Speaker 2: was Samy on the porch?
[1:06:48] Speaker 7: And where was that in relation to where you saw live?
[1:06:51] Speaker 2: Basically straight ahead? As soon as I turned to my right,
[1:06:56] Speaker 2: I was facing the porch and I seen Samy there.
[1:07:03] Speaker 7: And what was I think you mentioned Sammy was bleeding?
[1:07:07] Speaker 7: What was Sammy's condition?
[1:07:08] Speaker 2: Sam Sammy? She was bleeding from the mouth. She I
[1:07:11] Speaker 2: could tell she she was no longer alive.
[1:07:16] Speaker 7: What else did you see when we got there?
[1:07:18] Speaker 2: So I walked into the porch and I looked to
[1:07:24] Speaker 2: my left and I seen the cold. I couldn't see
[1:07:26] Speaker 2: her from the sidewalk because the bushes were high, And
[1:07:32] Speaker 2: I seen the cold land on the porch, and she
[1:07:34] Speaker 2: looked like she was mortally wounded.
[1:07:38] Speaker 7: Ye also, what what was.
[1:07:41] Speaker 2: It that made you think that I could tell by
[1:07:45] Speaker 2: her eyes that she was no longer with us?
[1:07:48] Speaker 3: Tracey said he moved out of having him in April
[1:07:50] Speaker 3: of twenty and twenty three. He said that Austin's actions
[1:07:55] Speaker 3: broke him that he no longer enjoyed the things that
[1:07:58] Speaker 3: he used to. He said he had not known Austin Thompson,
[1:08:03] Speaker 3: but had known where the family lived and had seen
[1:08:05] Speaker 3: him walking around outside. He had never even spoken to him.
[1:08:11] Speaker 3: Robert Stale sat in the gallery and listened to the
[1:08:13] Speaker 3: prosecutor describe Mary's death. Afterwards, he said that young man
[1:08:20] Speaker 3: took the best person I had ever met away from me.
[1:08:24] Speaker 3: Ralli Police Chief of Stella Patterson and Deputy Chief Jason
[1:08:27] Speaker 3: Ringsby both testified. Ringsby described the moment he found out
[1:08:32] Speaker 3: that Gabriel had died at the hospital. One of his
[1:08:36] Speaker 3: detectives had gone straight there. He said. The detective came
[1:08:40] Speaker 3: back out and told him. The deputy chief was standing
[1:08:44] Speaker 3: next to him. He testified, I told him the news
[1:08:49] Speaker 3: and we pressed on because we have a job to do.
[1:08:53] Speaker 3: Ralligh Police Sergeant William Tripp, who had been a detective
[1:08:56] Speaker 3: on the day of the shooting, took the stand and
[1:08:58] Speaker 3: walked the court through the physical evidence. He described the
[1:09:02] Speaker 3: ammunition found in the Thompson home one hundred and sixty boxes,
[1:09:07] Speaker 3: some of them already empty in a mount he said
[1:09:10] Speaker 3: he would not categorize as normal. He described the path
[1:09:14] Speaker 3: that Austin had taken through Herdingham, projected on a screen
[1:09:17] Speaker 3: as a digital map. He described the surveillance footage Austin
[1:09:22] Speaker 3: moving through the streets with his weapon, pausing, taking aim, firing,
[1:09:28] Speaker 3: and then he read the note. It had been found
[1:09:30] Speaker 3: in Austin's bedroom, written in scrawled print, timestamped at the
[1:09:35] Speaker 3: top Austin four twenty five pm, ten thirteen, twenty twenty two.
[1:09:41] Speaker 3: On the door of James's bedroom. A separate piece of
[1:09:44] Speaker 3: paper had been taped James dead inside, don't look. He
[1:09:49] Speaker 3: then read the longer note describing how he killed his brother.
[1:09:53] Speaker 3: It was revealed that Alan had discovered more notes and
[1:09:55] Speaker 3: diagrams in a hollowed out chapstick tube. One die was
[1:10:00] Speaker 3: believed to depict bomb making instructions. Others appeared to show
[1:10:05] Speaker 3: pipe bombs. The prosecution's final witness was Carrie Gibson, a
[1:10:10] Speaker 3: unit chief in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, who testified
[1:10:15] Speaker 3: about the pathway the targeted violence grievance, violent ideation, research
[1:10:21] Speaker 3: and planning, preparation, breach attack. She described how people could
[1:10:27] Speaker 3: progress through each stage without anyone around them knowing. She said,
[1:10:33] Speaker 3: there is a desire for them to kill or a
[1:10:35] Speaker 3: desire to die. She said that in order to be
[1:10:38] Speaker 3: successful with predatory violence, someone had to move from considering
[1:10:43] Speaker 3: it to planning to preparing without anybody detecting. Austin Thompson,
[1:10:49] Speaker 3: the prosecution argued, had done exactly that for months, methodically,
[1:10:54] Speaker 3: while living in his parents' house, going to school, playing
[1:10:58] Speaker 3: video games with his brother. When the prosecution rasted, the
[1:11:11] Speaker 3: defense began building a different picture, not of a cold
[1:11:15] Speaker 3: blooded predator, but of a boy whose mind had been
[1:11:19] Speaker 3: chemically altered in ways that nobody had understood or detected.
[1:11:24] Speaker 3: Austin's mother, Elise, took the stand. The defense showed family
[1:11:28] Speaker 3: photographs on the screen. Elise Satom watched them. She spoke
[1:11:33] Speaker 3: about Austin and James' relationship, said that they were close
[1:11:37] Speaker 3: and that they were really good kids.
[1:11:40] Speaker 7: And how were they as grows? They were very good.
[1:11:44] Speaker 15: They got along very well, and they did a lot
[1:11:46] Speaker 15: of stuff together.
[1:11:48] Speaker 7: When what types of things would they do together?
[1:11:53] Speaker 5: Of course, they played video games they were teenagers. They
[1:11:57] Speaker 5: walked to and from the bus every day to other
[1:12:01] Speaker 5: growing up, We went to the pool all the time.
[1:12:05] Speaker 5: They really enjoyed that.
[1:12:12] Speaker 15: I'm trying to think, I'm sorry, this is not the
[1:12:15] Speaker 15: most calm situation I've been in.
[1:12:17] Speaker 7: Is not, and we appreciate you being here.
[1:12:22] Speaker 9: They got along well, but they were personality wise, were
[1:12:27] Speaker 9: they different.
[1:12:29] Speaker 15: Yeah, James was more outgoing and Austin was more like me,
[1:12:36] Speaker 15: where it took him a few minutes to warm up
[1:12:38] Speaker 15: to a room or to new people, but after that
[1:12:41] Speaker 15: he was fine.
[1:12:44] Speaker 3: She said she had been at the hairdresser when the
[1:12:46] Speaker 3: shooting started. She couldn't reach her either of her sons.
[1:12:51] Speaker 3: When she finally got through to Alan, he told her
[1:12:53] Speaker 3: that he had a flat tire. She arrived back home
[1:12:56] Speaker 3: before he did. She said that it still hurt terror.
[1:13:01] Speaker 3: She said she loved Austin dearly. Alan took the stand
[1:13:05] Speaker 3: the following day and described what he called a mostly
[1:13:08] Speaker 3: normal childhood. He talked about taking Austin hunting about the
[1:13:13] Speaker 3: phone call he had received from Austin on October thirteenth.
[1:13:18] Speaker 3: He said there'd been no change in Austin's voice during
[1:13:20] Speaker 3: that call, that he couldn't attack him being out of breath.
[1:13:24] Speaker 3: There was nothing in that call that told him that
[1:13:26] Speaker 3: anything was wrong. He addressed the court directly in his statement.
[1:13:34] Speaker 14: On January tenth, two thousand and six, Alisa and I
[1:13:37] Speaker 14: welcomed our first child, James Roger Thompson, into our family.
[1:13:42] Speaker 14: Seventeen months later, on June tenth, two thousand and seven.
[1:13:46] Speaker 14: Cheap birthed to Austin David Thompson. We felt blessed to
[1:13:50] Speaker 14: have two healthy babies, especially since we were older parents.
[1:13:54] Speaker 14: For sixteen years, we enjoyed being with them and watching
[1:13:57] Speaker 14: them grow up through the different stages of life, from
[1:14:00] Speaker 14: crawling to take the first steps, saying the first word ball,
[1:14:04] Speaker 14: for both of them to go in from daycare to
[1:14:07] Speaker 14: middle school, through COVID and into high school. Those were
[1:14:11] Speaker 14: the best sixteen years of our lives. They wore our
[1:14:14] Speaker 14: world reading the bear, Reading the book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear,
[1:14:18] Speaker 14: What do you see? Was our favorite time at night
[1:14:20] Speaker 14: when they were little. As time went by, our bonds
[1:14:23] Speaker 14: with them grew even stronger. After a long day at work.
[1:14:27] Speaker 14: They could make you feel great by the smile on
[1:14:29] Speaker 14: their face when you pick them up from daycare school,
[1:14:31] Speaker 14: and they would come running to you saying daddy or mommy.
[1:14:35] Speaker 14: As they got older, it's a great end to the
[1:14:36] Speaker 14: day to walk into the door to them before sitting
[1:14:39] Speaker 14: down to eat dinner as a family. As they got older,
[1:14:42] Speaker 14: there were so many successes, whether it's good grades in
[1:14:45] Speaker 14: school and excellent decorated Christmas cookie on Christmas Eve, a
[1:14:50] Speaker 14: particularly excellent basketball shot, catching their first fish, or playing
[1:14:54] Speaker 14: video games together. There were so many good times. They
[1:14:58] Speaker 14: especial lot like the tradition to go into good berries
[1:15:01] Speaker 14: on the last day of school at least and now
[1:15:04] Speaker 14: were related when people would stopped us in the mall
[1:15:06] Speaker 14: tell us we have two cheap boys. Over the years,
[1:15:09] Speaker 14: we enjoy the holidays from Easter egg hunts in the neighborhood,
[1:15:13] Speaker 14: jet skin on Falls Lake and setting off fireworks on
[1:15:16] Speaker 14: the Fourth of July, trick or treating in the neighborhood,
[1:15:18] Speaker 14: and going to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving and Christmas lunch.
[1:15:22] Speaker 14: We helped James and Austin with eliminading a gob Offs
[1:15:25] Speaker 14: stand when they were eight to nine years old. They
[1:15:27] Speaker 14: were always coming up with something. Throughout the years, we
[1:15:30] Speaker 14: went to the beach in the summer, mountains in the fall,
[1:15:34] Speaker 14: collegiate and professional sporting events, historical sites, fishing, hunting, ziplining,
[1:15:39] Speaker 14: swimming pool and lakes, amusement parks in the state ferry,
[1:15:43] Speaker 14: to play games, red rides and eat the crazy foods.
[1:15:46] Speaker 14: James and Austin look the Oreo funnel, cake, cut candy
[1:15:49] Speaker 14: and lemonade. I enjoyed teaching them how to play basketball, soccer, baseball,
[1:15:54] Speaker 14: God for tennis and football. They both enjoyed playing and
[1:15:58] Speaker 14: watching sports, attended church regularly, served on several committees, involved
[1:16:03] Speaker 14: in mission work, participated in coach church basketball. The least
[1:16:08] Speaker 14: loved making their hallomen costumes, taking them for ice cream
[1:16:11] Speaker 14: on Sundays, taking them to the pool and parks, and
[1:16:14] Speaker 14: help them with their clothes and homework. As they got older,
[1:16:18] Speaker 14: they enjoyed playing on the Xbox three sixty and laters
[1:16:20] Speaker 14: of their PlayStation, where they met people across the United
[1:16:23] Speaker 14: States and overseas. Prior to the pandemic, they enjoyed playing
[1:16:27] Speaker 14: football and basketball in their neighborhood and going to the pool.
[1:16:31] Speaker 14: We were close to our boys. They were both such
[1:16:34] Speaker 14: good sons. You couldn't ask for any better. On October thirteenth,
[1:16:40] Speaker 14: twenty twenty two, aise.
[1:16:45] Speaker 11: I did.
[1:16:47] Speaker 14: A lease now experienced appearance worse not there that afternoon,
[1:16:56] Speaker 14: we lost their entire family. We do not know what
[1:16:59] Speaker 14: host and Burder, his brother in shop, six other people
[1:17:03] Speaker 14: from the night of the tragedy forward. We've been fully
[1:17:06] Speaker 14: cooperative with the Raleigh Police Department and hope that we
[1:17:09] Speaker 14: would receive answer to why Austin did this from their investigation. Today,
[1:17:14] Speaker 14: it still remains unknown to me while this tragedy occurred.
[1:17:19] Speaker 14: We lost both of our sons in one afternoon. I
[1:17:22] Speaker 14: cannot even begin to descruct the pain we feel every day.
[1:17:26] Speaker 14: We're just trying to do the best we kid.
[1:17:30] Speaker 3: Allan said he visited Austin at the detention center. He
[1:17:35] Speaker 3: apologized to the families of the victims and for the
[1:17:38] Speaker 3: pen that Austin had cost.
[1:17:40] Speaker 14: When Jamie died, A part of me died in Austin.
[1:17:45] Speaker 14: I mean, I still love him, but I just don't
[1:17:49] Speaker 14: understand why. I can't that the prom have. I can't
[1:17:52] Speaker 14: puff two and.
[1:17:53] Speaker 16: Two together.
[1:17:55] Speaker 14: The person I raised and the person who did these things.
[1:18:01] Speaker 3: When prosecutors pressed him on whether there had been any
[1:18:04] Speaker 3: warning signs, he said there hadn't. The central argument the
[1:18:08] Speaker 3: defense mounted was one that had been building since the
[1:18:11] Speaker 3: pre trial phase. Mirosylin. Austin had been prescribed the common
[1:18:16] Speaker 3: antibiotic to treat his acne in the period before the shooting.
[1:18:21] Speaker 3: His attorneys argued that the drug had triggered a rare
[1:18:24] Speaker 3: disassociative episode that had detached Austin from reality and driven
[1:18:29] Speaker 3: him to do what he did. To support him. They
[1:18:32] Speaker 3: called doctor mayher Nerden, a forensic DNA expert who testified
[1:18:37] Speaker 3: that Austin had inherited two copies of a faulty gene
[1:18:40] Speaker 3: from his parents that impaired his ability to metabolize certain medications.
[1:18:46] Speaker 3: The implication was that the medicine had accumulated an Austin's
[1:18:49] Speaker 3: system in ways it wouldn't have in an ordinary patient,
[1:18:54] Speaker 3: and that the psychiatric effects had gone entirely unrecognized. They
[1:18:59] Speaker 3: also called psychiatrist doctor George Corvin, who conducted an extensive
[1:19:04] Speaker 3: psychiatric evaluation. He said that as a result of the
[1:19:08] Speaker 3: traumatic brain injury Austin had sustained during his capture, he
[1:19:13] Speaker 3: was now fundamentally a different person. Austin two point zero
[1:19:17] Speaker 3: Corvin called him. He said that for some time after
[1:19:21] Speaker 3: he had first regained consciousness, Austin had no independent recollection
[1:19:26] Speaker 3: of what happened. To the extent that he had any
[1:19:29] Speaker 3: memories of that day, Corvin said there were concerns that
[1:19:33] Speaker 3: they may have been reconstructed secondarily rather than genuinely recalled.
[1:19:39] Speaker 3: He said Austin was shaking and quivering at the defense table,
[1:19:43] Speaker 3: visibly remorseful in ways the court couldn't see. He said
[1:19:47] Speaker 3: that Austin had every marker, every sign to be rehabilitated.
[1:19:52] Speaker 3: Teachers from Nightsdale High School testified about the student they
[1:19:55] Speaker 3: had known. Workers from the Cumberland Juvenile Detention Center described
[1:20:00] Speaker 3: his conduct and work ethic. He had been co operative,
[1:20:04] Speaker 3: They said, he had replied himself. He had graduated from
[1:20:08] Speaker 3: the Cumberland Learning Academy while in custody. The director of
[1:20:12] Speaker 3: Education Services testified he had met Austin once at his graduation.
[1:20:17] Speaker 3: The prosecution pushed back hard on the defense's argument. They
[1:20:22] Speaker 3: called doctor Deane Morrile, a children's dermatologist at UNC Health,
[1:20:27] Speaker 3: who said he had never in his practice heard of
[1:20:30] Speaker 3: the acne medication producing psychiatric side effects, let alone leading
[1:20:35] Speaker 3: to murder, and they pointed the court to Austin's months
[1:20:39] Speaker 3: of meticulous online research, the searches for mass shootings, for
[1:20:44] Speaker 3: active shooter tactics, for how juveniles were sentenced, for photographs
[1:20:49] Speaker 3: of his own school. If Austin had been so disassociated
[1:20:53] Speaker 3: from reality, the prosecution asked, how had he planned so
[1:20:57] Speaker 3: carefully and for so long. They also noted that during
[1:21:01] Speaker 3: his time in custody, Austin had asked a social worker
[1:21:05] Speaker 3: about two films involving civil war and warfare. The prosecution
[1:21:10] Speaker 3: said this was evidence that his interests has not changed,
[1:21:14] Speaker 3: that the same fixations that had driven him towards violence
[1:21:17] Speaker 3: in twentusand and twenty two were still present. Through the
[1:21:36] Speaker 3: second week of the hearing, the people whose lives had
[1:21:39] Speaker 3: been permanently altered by October thirteenth stood up and faced
[1:21:43] Speaker 3: Austin Thompson directly. Jasmine Torus read her victim impact statement
[1:21:48] Speaker 3: to the court, describing what her life in Layelah's life
[1:21:51] Speaker 3: looked like now. Leilah was five years old. Now she
[1:21:55] Speaker 3: had only known her father through photographs, through videos, and
[1:22:00] Speaker 3: through the stories her mother told her. Jasmine said her
[1:22:03] Speaker 3: daughter had learned her way through the cemetery to find
[1:22:06] Speaker 3: her father's grave before she could fully understand what a
[1:22:09] Speaker 3: cemetery was. She turned to Austin Thompson and told him
[1:22:14] Speaker 3: to look at her. He looked up from the defense table.
[1:22:18] Speaker 3: She then said, you stole his life. You stole my life,
[1:22:23] Speaker 3: You stole my daughter's life. He deserves to be locked
[1:22:26] Speaker 3: away for the rest of his sad, pathetic days of
[1:22:30] Speaker 3: his life on earth.
[1:22:33] Speaker 13: Not one of us surviving victims, our families, our friends,
[1:22:39] Speaker 13: our community should ever have to worry about a future
[1:22:43] Speaker 13: where his barbaric self is set free. Life without parole
[1:22:50] Speaker 13: for James Thompson sixteen, Life without parole for Nicole Connors
[1:23:00] Speaker 13: fifty two and Sammy Life without parole for Gabriel Torres
[1:23:09] Speaker 13: age twenty.
[1:23:10] Speaker 12: Nine, Life without parole for Mary Marshall age thirty four,
[1:23:19] Speaker 12: Life without parole for Susan Carna's age forty nine, A
[1:23:26] Speaker 12: life with no hope.
[1:23:32] Speaker 13: That's the conclusion of my victim statement. However, this morning,
[1:23:40] Speaker 13: on my way out the door, I spoke to my daughter,
[1:23:45] Speaker 13: my five year old daughter, and I told her I
[1:23:51] Speaker 13: was coming here today to speak to the man, the
[1:23:58] Speaker 13: bad guy who took her daddy away from her. She
[1:24:06] Speaker 13: wanted to come, my five year old, She wanted to
[1:24:10] Speaker 13: come and speak to you, but I couldn't let her
[1:24:16] Speaker 13: come be in the.
[1:24:16] Speaker 11: Same room as you, So instead.
[1:24:22] Speaker 13: She asked me to record her. And I'd like to
[1:24:28] Speaker 13: share what Laylah has to say, because Laylah is also a.
[1:24:33] Speaker 6: Victim here and she also has a voice.
[1:24:36] Speaker 13: And you took her daddy.
[1:24:39] Speaker 12: If you could, Laylah.
[1:24:43] Speaker 6: If you could talk to the person who.
[1:24:45] Speaker 14: Killed your dad out, what would you say to that person?
[1:24:47] Speaker 6: M say, Sarah, the red dater, I make him so much.
[1:24:53] Speaker 13: Yeah, uh, huh does it hurt you that dad does
[1:24:56] Speaker 13: not here?
[1:24:57] Speaker 7: Yes, or your whole hairror of him?
[1:25:00] Speaker 6: If you do, that's so good and.
[1:25:07] Speaker 13: Acred, did they? Yeah, Well, guess what.
[1:25:13] Speaker 12: Today, Mommy's going to talk to the black guy.
[1:25:15] Speaker 6: Okay, and I'll tell him not just how you feel, okay,
[1:25:20] Speaker 6: I guess you're.
[1:25:22] Speaker 3: Don Robert Steele spoke about Mary. He said that the
[1:25:26] Speaker 3: young man had taken the best person he had ever
[1:25:29] Speaker 3: met away from him. He said he wanted to look
[1:25:32] Speaker 3: Austin in the face when he faced justice. Dracy Howard
[1:25:37] Speaker 3: had been the only family member to attend every single
[1:25:40] Speaker 3: day of the hearing. He sat through all of it,
[1:25:44] Speaker 3: every piece of testimony, every exhibit, every argument. He later
[1:25:49] Speaker 3: described himself as a broken man. He said he had
[1:25:53] Speaker 3: never once heard Austin apologize. He had never seen any
[1:25:57] Speaker 3: sign of regret. He said, no soul right now, I
[1:26:03] Speaker 3: can't forgive him. Tom Cornat, Susan's husband, said he had
[1:26:07] Speaker 3: known from the night of October thirteenth that Susan wasn't
[1:26:11] Speaker 3: coming home. He had known the person responsible was in custody.
[1:26:16] Speaker 3: He said what the sentencing did was confirm what he
[1:26:18] Speaker 3: had always believed that Austin Thompson would never be free,
[1:26:24] Speaker 3: but it didn't change anything. He spoke about their boys
[1:26:28] Speaker 3: reaching milestones.
[1:26:30] Speaker 16: My joy that those things will be tempered because Sue
[1:26:33] Speaker 16: isn't there to experience it with us. And every day
[1:26:40] Speaker 16: for the rest of my life, I'll wake up and
[1:26:44] Speaker 16: Sue will not be lying next to me, and that
[1:26:48] Speaker 16: will make that day herd.
[1:26:50] Speaker 3: On the morning of Friday, the thirteenth of February, Judge
[1:26:53] Speaker 3: Paul Ridgeway took his seat and prepared to deliver his ruling.
[1:26:58] Speaker 3: Austin Thompson was brought into the court. His parents sat
[1:27:02] Speaker 3: in the gallery. Alan hunched forward, head down, at least
[1:27:06] Speaker 3: wiping tears from her face with a tissue. The families
[1:27:10] Speaker 3: of the victim sat on the other side of the
[1:27:11] Speaker 3: room and waited. The judge spoke at length before announcing
[1:27:16] Speaker 3: his decision. He chronicled the events of October thirteenth. He
[1:27:21] Speaker 3: described the lasting impact on the families. He addressed the
[1:27:25] Speaker 3: defense's arguments one by one. He said the court didn't
[1:27:29] Speaker 3: accept that mino cycline had caused Austin Thompson to disassociate
[1:27:34] Speaker 3: from reality and commit mass murder. In the fifty five
[1:27:38] Speaker 3: year history of the drugs, widespread use. He noted only
[1:27:41] Speaker 3: two cases had been reported with any detail in published
[1:27:45] Speaker 3: medical studies suggesting psychiatric effects. He said that the medical
[1:27:50] Speaker 3: evidence didn't support the claim Austin's conduct before, during, and
[1:27:55] Speaker 3: after the attacks had demonstrated deliberation and awareness. He said
[1:28:01] Speaker 3: that Austin's crimes were the product of months of fantasizing,
[1:28:05] Speaker 3: planning and preparation. They were not the product of transient immaturity,
[1:28:11] Speaker 3: the standard the Supreme Court had set as the basis
[1:28:14] Speaker 3: for considering juvenile offenders. Differently. He pointed to the Internet searches,
[1:28:19] Speaker 3: the diagrams in the chapstick tube, the note left in
[1:28:22] Speaker 3: the bedroom, the camouflage gear, the backpack, the seven hundred
[1:28:27] Speaker 3: dollars in cash. He said it was hard to conceive
[1:28:31] Speaker 3: of a greater display of malice, and then he said
[1:28:34] Speaker 3: that Austin Thompson was the rare juvenile offender whose crimes
[1:28:39] Speaker 3: reflected irreparable corruption, and that the sentence that followed from
[1:28:43] Speaker 3: the conclusion was the one he was about to impose.
[1:28:47] Speaker 3: Judge Ridgeway then sentenced Austin Thompson to five consecutive terms
[1:28:51] Speaker 3: of life in prison without the possibility of parole for
[1:28:56] Speaker 3: the attempted murders of Lynn Gardner and Casey Clarke added
[1:29:00] Speaker 3: additional consecutive sentences of a minimum of one hundred and
[1:29:04] Speaker 3: fifty seven months each. Austin Thompson was handcuffed and led
[1:29:09] Speaker 3: from the courtroom. Outside the Wake County Justice Center, Robert
[1:29:14] Speaker 3: Stale stood in the winter air and spoke to reporters.
[1:29:19] Speaker 3: Five consecutive life sentences without parole, he said, was what
[1:29:23] Speaker 3: they had all been hoping for, but he still ended
[1:29:28] Speaker 3: five lives. The lawsuit the families filed is still pending. Well,
[1:30:04] Speaker 3: that is it for today's episode of Morbidology. As always,
[1:30:07] Speaker 3: thank you so much for listening, and i'd like to
[1:30:09] Speaker 3: say a big, massive thank you to my newest supporter
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[1:30:16] Speaker 3: team as you all know, so the supportable their seriously
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[1:30:24] Speaker 3: to join, the link is in the description. I do
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[1:30:38] Speaker 3: Remember to check us out at morbidology dot com for
[1:30:41] Speaker 3: more information about this episode and to read some true
[1:30:44] Speaker 3: crime articles. Until next time, take care of yourselves, stay safe,
[1:30:48] Speaker 3: and have an amazing week
[1:31:00] Speaker 14: Up

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