A judge has sentenced a Raleigh teenager who acknowledged his role in a 2022 mass shooting to life in prison without parole Friday, rejecting arguments that he deserved the chance for release decades from now.
Last month, Austin Thompson pleaded guilty to killing five people including his brother James Thompson and injuring two others in Raleigh’s Hedingham neighborhood.
The other victims of the murders are 52-year-old Nicole Connors, 29-year-old Raleigh police officer Gabriel Torres, 34-year-old Mary Marshall and 49-year-old Susan Karnatz.
Equipped with firearms and wearing camouflage, Thompson fatally shot them in his neighborhood and along a greenway. He was later arrested in a shed, after a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
At the time of the shooting, Thompson was 15. Thompson, now 18, will serve five consecutive life sentences for all five counts of first degree murder at an adult correctional facility. He was also sentenced to an additional 157 months for attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury on Casey Clark as well as his neighbor Lynn Gardner.
Gardner sustained multiple injuries, after she was shot in her face, her torso, her arm, and her thigh. “Because of who I am and what I believe in has given me the grace to forgive the young man who shot me,” Gardner said on the first day of the sentencing hearing. “Being a Christian, I don’t just talk to talk. I walk the walk.”
Austin Thompson signs documents pleading guilty to five counts of murder in Wake County Superior Court on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
Thompson’s attorneys allege the acne medication he was on in 2022 called minocycline ultimately is what led him to commit the shootings.
Prosecutors released a note suggesting he committed violence in part because of anger concerns about the environment. Raleigh Police Sergeant William Tripp read the note to the court during the first week of the sentencing hearing.
“The reason I did this is because I hate humans they are destroying the planet/earth,” adding that he killed James Thompson “because he would get in my way.”
But, during Friday’s sentencing hearing, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway said the court doesn’t support the defense’s argument and believes that Thompson was aware of his actions.
“It is, quite frankly, hard to conceive of a greater display of pure malice than the conduct of the defendant in his indiscriminate targeting and brutal killing of five innocent homicide victims on October 13, 2022,” said Ridgeway. “Malice is one of the elements of first degree Murder. It is defined under our law as meaning not only hatred, ill will or spite, as that is ordinarily understood, to be sure that is malice, but it also means the condition of mind that prompts a person to intentionally inflict damage without just cause.”
Thompson’s attorneys were asking the court for life with the possibility of parole. Kellie Mannette, one of his attorneys, said on Thursday that he fully and totally accepted whatever the outcome of the hearing is, and that is exactly what makes him redeemable.
His other attorney, Deonte’ Thomas said Thompson “cannot tell you why he wrote that note the way that he did,” noting that he had no history of ecological-based anger. “And he cannot tell you why he ran down the streets of Hedingham terrorizing people that day.”
Thomas argued that the rampage happened during a behavioral episode caused by medicine he regularly took for acne dissociated the youth from reality. A forensic psychologist, Jennifer Sapia, who interviewed Thompson discussed a conversation to the court with him.
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A vigil was held in Raleigh’s Headingham neighborhood on Monday, Oct. 17 for the five people who were shot and killed on Thursday, Oct. 13.
Matt Ramey / for WUNC
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A cordoned-off section of a northeast Raleigh neighborhood on Friday, October 14, 2022, the morning after a mass shooting there killed five people.
Matt Ramey / For WUNC
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Police continued to have a presence Friday morning in the northeast Raleigh neighborhood where five people were killed in a mass shooting on Thursday, October 13, 2022.
Matt Ramey / for WUNC
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Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin talks with reporters on Friday, October 14, 2022 after a mass shooting in the city’s northeast neighborhood.
Matt Ramey / For WUNC
“He understands cognitively, what has happened, right, and has taken responsibility for that, understands that he will be going to prison for a very long time,” she said. “But it was kind of like this adolescent magical thinking. He was talking about a future, maybe being a dental hygienist.”
Both his mother and father gave impact statements during his sentencing hearing. His dad, Alan Thompson said it was a parent’s worst nightmare.
“That afternoon, we lost our entire family,” he said. “We did not know why Austin murdered his brother and shot six other people.”
His father pleaded guilty in 2024 to improperly storing a handgun that authorities said was found with his son after the shootings. He received a suspended jail sentence as well as probation. Thompson’s mom, Elise Thompson, took the stand last week as well as earlier this week, remaining hopeful that he would get life with the possibility of parole. She said “I know he did this horrible crime, and that he has to pay for this crime.”
“I just hope that after I believe, someone told me a 40-year sentence, that hopefully he can go back into society, if he’s capable of doing that,” she added at the time. Last week, Elise also apologized to the families while still on the stand.
“The last thing I want to say is to the families of the victims, Susan, Mary, Nicole, Gabriel and to the survivors, Lynn and Casey, I know your lives have changed permanently,” she said. “And I am and will forever be sorry for the pain that this has caused you.”
The Associated Press contributed.