A hearing in North Carolina provided a rare look at a teenage mass shooter. Here are the details.
Following a seven-day hearing, a judge sentenced an 18-year-old man to five consecutive terms of life in prison without parole for murdering five people when he was 15.
An 18-year-old North Carolina man who killed five people when he was 15 was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday, and the two-week hearing was video recorded and streamed live online. It offered a rare look at the life of a mass murderer and the juvenile detention center where he’s currently incarcerated.
Austin Thompson was a high school sophomore with a 3.8 grade point average when he shot and stabbed his 16-year-old brother in their parents’ home in Raleigh on Oct. 13, 2022, then went outside and fatally shot four people and injured two others.
Killed were Nicole Connors, 52; Susan Karnatz, 49; Mary Beth Marshall, 35; and Gabriel Torres, 29, a Raleigh police officer who was on his way to work. Officer Casey Clark and Connors’ friend Marcille “Lynn” Gardner were seriously injured.
Thompson was hospitalized after he shot himself in the forehead as police approached him. He sustained a traumatic brain injury but recovered well enough to become the first at his juvenile detention center to earn his high school diploma. He pleaded guilty on Jan. 21 to all charges, including five counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.
Judge Paul C. Ridgeway in North Carolina’s 10th Judicial District in Raleigh presided over a seven-day sentencing hearing pursuant to a state law enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 ruled unconstitutional any sentencing statute that mandates life in prison without parole for people who commit homicide under the age of 18.
North Carolina lawmakers changed state sentencing requirements for homicides committed by juveniles to require consideration of youthfulness and other factors before imposing a life sentence.
The judge heard testimony from 39 people and said Friday he “concludes that the answer to the issue before the court at this hearing is, ‘Yes. Austin Thompson is the rare offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.’”
The evidence reflects “a defendant who, for many months, and certainly several months prior to committing murder, fantasized, researched and planned his criminal acts and his escape,” Ridgeway said.
“On the day he committed the murders, he confirmed his sanity, his culpability and his lack of regret in a written note,” Ridgeway said. He said Thompson “was a highly intelligent and inquisitive person.”
“He suffered no apparent mental health defects, no developmental disabilities, no health issues,” Ridgeway said.
Ridgeway, a judge since 2007, sentenced Thompson to five consecutive life terms with no parole for the murders and two additional sentences of 157 months to 201 months each — approximately 13 years to 17 years — for the attempted murders.
Before he did, Ridgeway shared “a bit that I learned about each one of the victims.”
The judge described Thompson’s brother, James Roger Thompson, as an honor student with a 4.12 grade point average who was “saving money from his odd jobs for a car and college.” He was an “all-around athlete” who “excelled in team sports.”
“A good son, couldn’t ask for anything better,” Ridgeway said.
Connors and Gardner were the first people Thompson shot after he left his parents’ home. They were sitting on Connors’ porch with their dogs when Thompson walked by and opened fire.
Gardner survived, and Ridgeway said she “sat on the witness stand and said that God has given her the grace to forgive the young man that shot her.”
“That reflects a beautiful soul,” the judge said.
He cited testimony from Connors’ widower, Tracey Howard.
“Nicole. What struck me was she was loved so fiercely by her husband that the defendant’s actions have broken him. He doesn’t enjoy things like he used to. He feels socially awkward. He doesn’t like to go anywhere because he feels guilty about having fun without his wife,” Ridgeway said, his voice breaking with emotion.
Ridgeway described Torres as “a former U.S. Marine, Raleigh police officer, a really great husband and father.”
“Gabe’s daughter knows her father only through photos, videos and a cut-out pillow with his image on it,” Ridgeway said.
After killing Torres, Thompson moved to a greenway along the Neuse River, where he fatally shot Karnatz as she jogged.
Ridgeway said Karnatz was “a runner, marathoner, ultra marathoner, mother of Max, Oliver and Everett.”
“Every day, when her husband, Tom, wakes up, he realizes his wife is not there laying beside him, and that makes that day hard, and he knows that that will be his experience every day for the rest of his life,” Ridgway said.
Thompson fatally shot Marshall as she walked her dog on the same greenway.
Ridgeway said he loves a family member’s “description of Mary Beth as the home entertainment system of their family: singing loudly, off-key silly jokes.”
“And I really like this description she had of ‘laughter that can only be described as what sunshine sounds like,’” the judge said.
Before deputies took Thompson out of the courtroom, his lawyer Kellie Mannette told Ridgeway, “The defense enters notice of appeal and requests that the appellate defender’s office be appointed,” and the judge did so.
Mannette and her co-counsel Deonte Thomas, Wake County’s chief public defender, argued Thompson’s prescription anti-acne medication for causing a psychotic “depersonalization” that was exasperated by his devotion to playing first-person shooter video games such as “Call of Duty.”
“We look at the video and see him act this way at 5:30 in the afternoon, without a care to cover his face, without a care to run and hide, acting like he was a character in one of those shooter games that he plays,” Thomas told Ridgeway before the defense began calling witnesses on Feb. 10. “He was under the throes of this depersonalization caused by minocycline, and he can’t understand it.”
Ridgeway, however, noted that Thompson researched violence and mass shootings before he was prescribed minocycline, which “has been widely used and prescribed for over 50 years.”
Based on testimony from two defense expert witnesses, “the risk of dissociation side effects from minocycline is infinitesimally rare in the 55-year history of the widespread usage of drug,” Ridgeway said.
“Moreover, neither expert was aware of any connection between dissociation attributed to minocycline in any violence, homicide or criminal conduct,” Ridgeway said.
‘There were no signs at all’
Thompson left a note in his bedroom that he apparently wrote after he killed his brother. It began, “The reason I did this is because I hate humans. They are destroying the planet / Earth.”
“I don’t have a goal. I’m not suicidal. Death is like sleep. That’s why I don’t care if I die. I have never been bullied or anything. Bye, Dad. I don’t like you, Mom. Every other family member is good,” he wrote.
He also wrote, “I am not mental,” and he said he killed his brother with a .22 he stole from a Cabela’s sporting goods store. “I killed James because he would get in my way,” he wrote.
He scrawled, “James dead inside, don’t look” in a corner and tore it off and placed it in front of the door to the bathroom where his brother lay dead.
His father, Alan Thompson, testified he later learned he’d called his son shortly after he’d murdered his other son, not knowing what had happened, and asked if he needed anything from the grocery store. He’d called his older son first, but he didn’t answer “and I was a little ticked off at James, because very rarely did I have to call or text him, and he didn’t answer his phone.”
“So I called Austin, and Austin answered the phone, and I told him, ‘I’m going to the grocery store to pick up two gallons of milk. Do you need anything?’ And in a regular, calm voice, he said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I’m good,” Thompson testified on Feb. 5.
Thompson said an investigator asked him to sign a waiver so police could access his son’s medical records, and “I said, ‘I’ll sign anything you want. You got to make me a promise.’ I said, ‘You promise me you find out why he did this.’ And he said, ‘I will.’”
Thompson, now 62, pleaded guilty in September 2024 to misdemeanor failure to store a firearm to protect a minor. He received one year of unsupervised probation and a 45-day suspended jail sentence.
Regarding the firearms in his home, Thompson testified that “as most people know I have had 11 taken out of the house.” Police also seized a disassembled gun that “I was going to give him, Austin, for Christmas so he could use it when we went duck hunting.”
Thompson taught his sons to use firearms while hunting. He said he had “on the surface it would seem like it’s a lot” of ammunition in his home because he stocked up during the Covid-19 pandemic because the price was rising and it was hard to find.
“I raised my sons the same way that I was raised. Yeah, you know, firearm safety,.” he testified. “Then on top of that, a lot of folks might not know that above age 12, you can be in possession of a long rifle. And so if I’m not home, or Elise is not home, I would hope that they will be able to protect themselves if someone came to the house.”
Asked about his relationship with his son, he said, “Well, I don’t expect people to understand this, but I,” and began to cry.
“I love my two sons, and I always love my two sons, but, uh, but my relationship with Austin has changed because of what he did. My whole life has changed," Thompson continued.
“When James died, part of me died. And with Austin, I mean, I still love him, but I just don’t understand why. The problem I have, I can’t put two and two together. The person I raised and the person who did these things? I can’t put them together. … There were no signs. … That’s the scary part. There were no signs at all.”
Elise Thompson, testified on Feb. 4 that she saw no warning signs and did not know of her son’s dark Internet browsing history and his Google searches about violence.
“They were really good kids. They were at home, at school, at Sunday school, they, as far as I know, they never even handed in a late assignment ever to school,” she said.
She said his rampage “was a complete shock. There were no no different moods, no different behavior, nothing.”
“Understanding that this is likely a parent’s worst nightmare, is there anything that you can think of that looking back, you feel like maybe you should have noticed or seen?” Wake County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Latour asked.
“No. … I’ve run through that almost every day since the tragedy, and I, I don't remember seeing any issues at all, or mood swings or anything like that. He was just normal,” she said.
She read aloud a letter she wrote that said, “To know that my son, who I carried for nine months, caused all of this heartache and tragedy, is still a complete shock.”
“Austin was a happy kid. He was an honor roll student who never caused any trouble, problems at school or Sunday school. He was a great kid and a great brother and a great son. What he did makes no sense to me,” she said.
She read aloud a message directly to her son.
“Austin, I know you did this, and I also know as your mom, this wasn’t anything you had in you. You and James were great babies, kids and teens. You and James were our world. I miss you both every day. I can’t imagine a day there will ever be where I don’t miss you,” she said.
Thompson testified again on Feb. 10 as a defense witness.
She recalled the first time she saw him in the hospital after the shooting as “really traumatic.”
”I remember looking to my side and saying to the nurse, ‘Oh, you can just tell me where he is. That’s fine.’ And I remember her going, ‘He’s right there’ with her hand. … What I remember happened was I went, ‘Oh, my baby.’ And I tried to cover my mouth because I started to scream,” Thompson said.
In cross-exam, Latour questioned Thompson about her current relationship with her son and the items she sends him in custody.
“You’ve been there with him every step of the way that you were allowed to since then. Correct?” Latour asked.
“Yes, that’s true,” Thompson answered.
“And you intend to continue that. Is that fair?” Latour asked.
“Yes. I want to stay in his life,” Thompson said.
Thompson said she mails him humor books like “you might be a redneck if,” and then “a couple of them are the funny things that kids say.”
She also mails him Darwin Awards books “which is like stupid ways that people have passed away,” and she sends him crime novels by James Patterson, John Grisham and Tom Clancy books, and the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.
Latour asked if she was “aware of his interest in or any interest that he may have had in violence or these mass shootings or other types of weapons?”
”No, not at all. If I did, of course, I would try and, you know, find a specialist of some kind,” she said.
“And he didn’t share this portion of his life with you?” Latour asked.
“No,” Thompson answered.
In direct, Mannette asked Thompson, “how have your dreams for Austin changed?”
“They’re gone. He did this horrible crime, and he has to pay for this crime, and I just hope that after the, I believe someone told me 40-year sentence, that hopefully he can be reevaluated and have a mental analysis with another neurologist and whatever else needs to be done to see if he can be go back into society if he’s capable of doing that,” Thompson said.
Austin Thompson did not appear to show emotion during any witness’ testimony, but Thomas told Judge Ridgeway on Feb. 10, “Austin sits here in ways that you cannot see, shaking and quivering and fully remorseful for his actions of that day.”
He also appeared to show no emotion during emotional victim impact statements, including one from Torres’ widow, Jasmine Torres, that included a recorded message from their daughter, Layla Torres.
“My daughter is now five. She only knows her daddy through photos and videos and my recounting of his life with us. By the time she was two and a half, she knew her way through a sea of tombstones and could get to her daddy’s resting place without my help,” Torres said.
Judge Ridgeway heard other wrenching testimony from family members of other victims, and he heard testimony from several of Thompson’s teachers, from his kindergarten teacher to several of his teachers at Knightdale High School.
Laura Wright, a career development coordinator who taught Thompson in a computer design course, said he “constantly” played first-person shooter video games in class because he and other students knew how to breach the school’s Internet security to access them. After Austin was was arrested, Wright reflected on a comic strip he’d drawn as an assignment that depicted a hero turning into a villain and killing people.
Teacher Madeline Solock also testified that Thompson frequently played shooter video games in her class, and she said she’s strictly banned the games since his arrest.
“All my students now will tell you it's one of my four non-negotiables. I’m very, very strict on it. I get really emotional when I see it, just because it reminds me,” Solock said.
Investigators used location information from Thompson’s cellphone to make a video showing his movements, and they compiled a spreadsheet showing his Google searches, which included “Kid kills his brother and parents”, “Do most people scream after being stabbed in the neck?”, “The Anarchist Cookbook”, “How fast does a .22 have to go to penetrate a skull?” and “How many years is a life sentence?”
Clark, the police officer who was shot, testified about getting shot and about how his injury and his career ending has affected him and his family.
“My wife specifically has a lot of trauma from this,” he said, choking up.
“Instead of the happy-go-lucky woman that I married, where she was able to walk down the street, not stress … now, she evaluates everyone as a threat. She has a lot more fear than she used to,” said Clark, who now sells real estate in Michigan.
He said his four-year-old son asks “is that because you were shot?” when he reaches for his leg, and he knows he’ll eventually have to tell the boy exactly what happened.
“It’s gonna come up. It’s public record. The video of me getting shot is on YouTube,” Clark testified.
Clark said “just walking through woods” has become stressful.
“It was pleasant, peaceful. Now I’m evaluating, looking for a threat, looking for the shooter that's in the woods,” he said.
Clark urged Judge Ridgeway not to grant the possibility of parole.
“I wanted to point out that this is what a 15 year old could do with minimal life experience and ability. I don’t want to see what a grown adult that had decades of time to plan the next assault. I am asking you to give him life without parole,” Clark said.
The shooting and Thompson’s arrest was followed in real time on social media the night it all happened, and many asked why police managed to arrest Thompson alive. The sentencing hearing provided a lot of details: Raleigh police testified about tracking and capturing Thompson, including now-retired Sgt. David McDonald, who led the special operations unit and was with Clark when Thompson shot him.
The final prosecution witness was Karie Gibson, a unit chief in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit who testified over the defense’s objection.
Gibson testified about her expertise in targeted violence and the pathway to violence. She detailed the stages: grievance, violent ideation, research and planning, preparation, breach and attack.
“A lot of times when we're looking at these cases, it's very specific to that offender,” Gibson said. “In order for someone to be successful with predatory violence, they need to progress from considering, planning and preparing without anybody knowing about it. So what we find as part of this is that as someone is progressing on the pathway, it's very important they keep that quiet.”
She said it’s “probably only around 10 to 13 percent where you have a primary family member that could be a victim.”
An in-custody baptism and high school graduation
Thompson’s defense witnesses included several teachers as well as employees from the the Cumberland Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Fayetteville, where he was incarcerated after he left the hospital. The juvenile detention witness said at the beginning of their testimony that they were under order to breach confidentiality to discuss Thompson.
Thompson earned his center’s top-ranked gold status in six weeks, and he was the first teen ever at the center to earn his high school diploma.
Other teenagers detained at the center helped conduct the ceremony, which was a traditional graduation with a cap and gown, “pomp and circumstance” and a speech from “a local resident who was a previously adjudicated youth,” said Casey Corey, the director of education for North Carolina’s 14 juvenile detention centers.
“It’s so important so that kids see the progression that you can make ... once you’re in that particular setting. That there are opportunities — if you take those opportunities — in the community for you to be successful,” Corey said.
Thomas asked if Corey wants the teens in the center with Thompson to aspire to graduate like he did.
“Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely,” Corey said.
Phyllis Jones, the retired juvenile justice school principal, testified that Thompson was “very humble” at his graduation.
“He was very thankful that he finished his coursework. He was excited that his parents were there, and other family and friends, people from the central office of … the Department of Juvenile Justice,” Jones said.
“He was always very interested in his education. Of course, there were courses that he took that he really didn't like, but he understood that he had to have that credit, and he worked hard. He did his best in all the subjects that he took,” Jones said.
Darcy Ross, a behavioral specialist at Cumberland, testified Thompson is allowed at a tablet at times in his room “and there’s movies on there, so he can watch movies.”
“He plays his Nintendo Switch, listens to music, reads books, and then, you know, of course, rec time he’ll come out or go play basketball when they go outside,” Ross said. She said he sometimes gets “really upset” and mutters under his breath, and sometimes when playing basketball “with the kids, he’d hit one of them in the shins with the basketball. Had to be redirected for that.”
Judge Ridgeway also heard testimony about Thompson’s getting baptized in custody.
Volunteer chaplain Robert Fermanides said it “was different than most baptisms.”
“We were limited. I did ask if we could do more than a sprinkling with a bottle of water, and that didn’t work out,” he said.
Fermanides described Thompson as “very fun, loving, genuine, jovial ... maybe I would say a little self protected.” He said his favorite thing about Thompson is “he’s an overcomer” and “that he’s very genuine.”
In cross-exam, Latour asked Fermanides, “Are you able to tell us what your favorite thing about Nicole Connors, Gabriel Torres, James Thompson, Susan Karnatz and Mary Marshall was?”
Fermanides appeared taken aback by the question.
“Am I able to? Absolutely not,” Fermanides said.
“Because those are the people that he killed,” Latour said.
“Sir, I don’t, I don’t watch the media on these students, because I have one job, and so I’m assuming, and I’m very sensitive to the to those folks, you just call their names out. That hurts my heart,” Fermanides said. (None of the victims was a student except Thompson’s brother.)
“I guess my point, sir, is you never got to meet those people, right?” Latour asked.
“Correct, yes, sir,” Fermanides answered.
No expert evaluated Thompson for prosecutors, but two evaluated him for the defense: Psychiatrist George Patrick Corvin and psychologist Jennifer Sapia.
Corvin said “to the extent” that Thompson “has some memories of what occurred that day, there are concerns that those memories may be secondarily obtained through a process called provoked confabulation.” He referred to Thompson today as “Austin 2.0.”
“For some time after he woke up from this injury, he had no real independent recollection of what had occurred. Over time, he has come to have fairly detailed recollection of what the events were that occurred, but during that same period of time, he had been reviewing discovery materials describing what occurred in detail,” Corvin testified on Feb. 10.
He said Thompson’s note made no sense, and “at first I was fairly confident that a sort of typical motivating factor would emerge. It did not.”
Both Sapia and Corvin commented on the speed of Thompson’s recovery from his brain injury. Sapia that his IQ has increased from 73 to 91 but “the significance, though, of his traumatic brain injury that has been described as catastrophic and irreparable, that will always play a role in his development or lack thereof.”
Thompson’s lawyer asked Sapia, “Would it be possible that Austin can’t or hasn't articulated a reason for this because he doesn’t know how?”
“I guess anything is possible,” Sapia testified. She said he “did write reasons in that note.”
“When I asked him about that. he doesn’t recall writing the notes and said, you know, doesn’t know what those notes mean,” Sapia said.
Another defense expert, Maher Noureddine, testified that Thompson’s metabolism may have aided in his acne medication’s harmful affects on him.
Mannette told Ridgeway in her 40-minute summation on Feb. 12 that Thompson “is different from an adult.”
“Austin is different from another child. Austin is different from a stereotypical mass shooter,” Mannette said. Society is angry about mass shootings, “but we have nowhere to put that anger other than in the mass shooters themselves, because nobody is doing anything systemically.”
“Now I am not saying that mass shooters are not to blame. I’m not saying that Austin Thompson isn’t to blame,” Mannette said. “But I am saying that we focus our energy and attention on them in a way that makes us want to say that they fit this mold, and they are like this, and they always proceed in this way with these signs, because it makes us feel safe that while we might be touched by the violence of mass shooting, we aren’t going to have a mass shooter in our family.”
Latour said in his 90-minute summation that Thompson “put on this brilliant disguise for everybody around him, because he was a smart guy. He is a smart guy. He knew he better not put make this public, because somebody’s going to try and stop me.”
“He was smart enough to bypass computer systems to get to the games while he's in school. He is able to essentially fend for themselves for several hours a day. We let 15 year olds drive cars and learn how to drive cars for a reason. He’s not a 10 year old that we’re talking about here. He’s a 15-year-old young man at this point who is on the mature end,” Latour said.
Judge Ridgeway addressed Noureddine’s testimony in his ruling.
“He undertook to answer the question of whether defendant’s ability to metabolize minocycline could have been altered by his genetic background and consequently increase his risk of experiencing side effects,” Ridgeway said on Friday. “His experiment did not prove his hypothesis, but in fact, proved the opposite. After extracting defendant’s DNA and having it forensically analyzed, Dr. Noureddine found … no scientific evidence of genetic inability to metabolize minocycline.”
The judge said Thompson’s Internet search history foreshadowed his violence, including researching whether “someone can talk if their voice box is cut out. Do most people scream after being stabbed in the neck? Can you hear someone shoot a 22 inside their home? How fast does a 22 have to go to penetrate a skull?”
“After seven months of researching Eric Rudolph, who was a mass murderer, who committed acts of terror and evaded capture for many months by hiding in the woods, defendant on Oct. 13, packed a survival bag and headed into the deep woods after committing mass murder,” Ridgeway said.
“After researching the lethality of double-aught buckshot … on Oct. 13, defendant chose that as his instrument of murder,” Ridgeway said.
“After researching the weight of 100 shells, shotgun shells, on Oct. 13, defendant packed approximately 100 shotgun shells to carry with him for his escape,” Ridgeway said.
“After researching whether one could hear a 22 fired inside his house, on Oct. 13, defendant shot his brother with a 22 inside their house,” Ridgeway said.
After researching whether someone could talk if their voice box is cut and whether a person screams when stabbed in the neck, on Oct. 13, defendant stabbed his brother in the neck over 50 times, and a reasonable inference from the evidence is that he attempted to cut James’s voice box out,” Ridgeway said.
“After researching mass shooters who hate humans and humans destroying the planet, on Oct. 13, defendant wrote a note he left after murdering James, saying defendant hated humans because they were destroying the planet,” Ridgeway said.
“This lengthy period of premeditation and deliberation, when coupled with the pure malice displayed towards his random and innocent victims, are compelling findings that support the conclusion, or a conclusion, that Austin Thompson is one of those rare juvenile offenders whose crime reflect irreparable corruption,” the judge continued.
Ridgeway is a graduate of Campbell University School of Law who “has presided in courts in over 40 counties in North Carolina, and has been appointed by the Chief Justice to adjudicate exceptional and complex commercial and constitutional matters throughout the State,” according to his Campbell University adjunct faculty page.
The video of him sentencing Thompson drew large views on all social media platforms, including from many who praised his decision. Many also were touched by his tribute to the victims.
“Judge had me crying for these people I have never met. Thank you judge for giving these people the justice they deserve,” someone wrote on X.
Meanwhile, trial began Monday for a man whose son killed four people at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Sept. 4, 2024.
Colin Gray's son, Colt Gray, is awaiting trial on 55 charges, including counts of murder and aggravated assault.
The father’s charges include involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder and cruelty to children. Prosecutors say he gave his son the rifle used in the shooting as a Christmas gift, despite being told by law enforcement to keep guns away from him.
The victims were Mason Schermerhorn, 14; Christian Angulo, 14; Richard Aspinwall, 39 and a math teacher and defensive coordinator for the school’s football team; and Cristina Irimie, 53 and a math teacher. Eight students and one teacher were injured.
The trial was moved from Barrow County to the Hall County Courthouse in Gainesville because of extensive pretrial publicity in Barrow County. Nicholas Primm, the chief judge in Georgia’s Piedmont Judicial Circuit, is presiding.
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