A young man who pleaded guilty to killing five people and wounding two others in 2022 in suburban Raleigh, N.C., was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without the chance of parole. The judge rejected his lawyers’ arguments that he deserved the possibility of release decades from now.
The shooter, Austin Thompson, now 18, pleaded guilty last month to all charges against him, a rare conclusion to a mass shooting case. The charges included five counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Since Mr. Thompson was 15 at the time of the attack, he could not receive the death penalty. He was expected to appeal his sentence.
Judge Paul C. Ridgeway of Wake County Superior Court said during the sentencing on Friday that it was “hard to conceive of a greater display of malice,” and that Mr. Thompson’s actions reflected “irreparable corruption.”
The killings on Oct. 13, 2022, in a neighborhood northeast of downtown Raleigh, near winding walking trails along the Neuse River, shocked the state and captured national attention.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Thompson had gone to school that day with his brother in what appeared to be a typical morning.
But when they came back home in the afternoon, around 4 p.m., Mr. Thompson went to one of the rooms in the house, retrieved a rifle and shot his 16-year-old brother, James, in the back of the head, said Joseph Latour, an assistant district attorney in Wake County.
Mr. Thompson then grabbed a knife and stabbed his brother dozens of times. Their mother would later find James dead in one of the bathrooms, Mr. Latour said.
After killing his brother, Mr. Thompson took a shotgun, a handgun and a hunting knife and set out through his neighborhood of Hedingham, near houses along a golf course. Clad in camouflage, he fired at people he encountered on his path, officials said, including victims in a car, in a driveway, on a front porch and along a nearby walking path.
The four others killed were Gabriel Torres, 29, an off-duty Raleigh police officer; Nicole Connors, 52, who lived near the Thompsons’ house; and Mary Marshall, 34, and Susan Karnatz, 49, who were shot on a greenway trail. Mr. Thompson also shot and injured two people, including a Raleigh police officer responding to the shooting.
After the burst of violence, Mr. Thompson was in a standoff with police officers, who eventually arrested him. Prosecutors say that Mr. Thompson shot himself in the head before his arrest, resulting in a “serious brain injury,” according to his lawyers.
During the sentencing hearing, prosecutors presented new information about Mr. Thompson’s possible motives, revealing a handwritten note found at the Thompson house that had Mr. Thompson’s name and the shooting date. The note said that the reason he was “doing this is because I hate humans they are destroying the planet/earth,” and that he killed his brother because “he would get in my way.”
Last month, prosecutors also revealed information about Mr. Thompson’s online search history that they said included searches for various mass shootings, the types of weapons used in them and the “locations that would be more likely to be deadly.”
Mr. Thompson’s lawyers argued this month that the shooting occurred during a dissociative episode caused by the medicine he took for acne. They also said that Mr. Thompson could not explain why he wrote the note the way that he did.
Eduardo Medina is a Times reporter covering the South. An Alabama native, he is now based in Durham, N.C.
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