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5 Killed, Including Off-Duty Officer, as Gunman Stalks a Raleigh Neighborhood
5 Killed, Including Off-Duty Officer, as Gunman Strikes a Raleigh Neighborhood
(about 4 hours later)
RALEIGH, N.C. — A gunman killed five people, including an off-duty police officer, in a shooting Thursday night that turned a normally calm residential area of Raleigh, N.C., into a sprawling crime scene.
RALEIGH, N.C. — A white male teenager fatally shot five people, including an off-duty police officer, in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, the authorities said.
The authorities said late Thursday that a suspect, described only as a “white male juvenile,” was in custody. Earlier in the evening, they said that the suspect had been “contained.” A police spokesman did not specify the suspect’s age or provide any more information about him. They also did not identify a motive for the attack.
As dawn neared on Friday, they had not disclosed the gunman’s age or a possible motive, among other details. But it was clear that the violence had stunned a middle-class area in one of America’s fastest-growing cities.
Suddenly, those vinyl-sided homes, tidy lawns and yellowing oak tree canopies felt a lot less secure.
“I can’t believe this is happening in my neighborhood,” Cheryl St. James, a nurse, said late Thursday as she inched her car through traffic caused by a crush of police and emergency vehicles. “It’s scary.”
Yet at this stage of America’s numbing epidemic of gun violence — in a rich country where school children participate in “mass casualty” simulations — such episodes are no longer all that surprising.
Another young man stalking civilians with a powerful weapon. Another quiet American neighborhood forced to digest the incomprehensible.
“Tonight, terror has reached our doorstep,” Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference just before 11 p.m. at the Raleigh Municipal Building. “The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh. This is a senseless, horrific and infuriating act of violence.”
“Tonight, terror has reached our doorstep,” Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference just before 11 p.m. at the Raleigh Municipal Building. “The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh. This is a senseless, horrific and infuriating act of violence.”
Two others were wounded, among them a police officer who was released from the hospital late Thursday and another person who remained in critical condition, the authorities said. None of the victims were identified by the authorities.
A day earlier, terror had struck six states away in Bristol, Conn., when two police officers were killed and a third was wounded in what the authorities described as an apparent ambush by a 35-year-old gunman who was killed at the scene.
Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin appeared visibly emotional as she tallied up the casualties at an earlier news conference. “All of us in Raleigh need to come together,” Ms. Baldwin said. “We need to support those in our community who have suffered a terrible loss, a loss of a loved one.”
The death toll in Raleigh on Thursday made the shooting the deadliest of 17 shootings in North Carolina so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The attacks drew a forceful response from multiple law enforcement agencies that flooded the Hedingham neighborhood, on the city’s East Side, with emergency vehicles late Thursday afternoon. Residents said they had heard sirens at about 4 p.m. and that within an hour, the neighborhood of tidy, tree-lined streets was filled with scores of police cars that had sped to the scene.
Two others were wounded: a police officer who was released from the hospital and another person who remained in critical condition, the authorities said. None of the victims had been identified as of Friday morning.
Shortly before 6 p.m., the Raleigh police cautioned on Twitter: “Residents in that area are advised to remain in their homes.”
The shooting was the latest instance of gun violence by a young man in the United States. So far, the year’s most notorious episode was in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school.
The neighborhood is near the Neuse River Greenway, a popular bike trail for Raleigh residents.
In July, a 20-year-old gunman killed three people and wounded two others at a mall food court in Indiana — less than two weeks after a 21-year-old gunman killed seven and wounded dozens more during a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb.
The shootings threw the neighborhood, full of single-family homes and golf courses, into a virtual lockdown.
Raleigh’s mayor, Mary-Ann Baldwin, appeared emotional as she tallied up the casualties at a news conference on Thursday. Hours later, she appealed to people beyond the city’s limits.
Traffic was at a standstill on Eagle Trace Drive, a normally quiet road with a plant-filled median, about a mile and a half from the site. Sirens wailed in the distance as the cars inched forward, and police vehicles with lights flashing nosed through.
“We have to end this mindless gun violence that is happening in our country,” Ms. Baldwin said, adding that there are “too many victims.”
“I’m never going to get home,” said Cheryl St. James, a nurse, as she sat in her car. “I want to get home. I can’t believe this is happening in my neighborhood. It’s scary.”
“We have to wake up,” she said. “I don’t want other mayors standing here at the podium with their hearts breaking because people in their community died.”
Ethan Garner, a project manager who has lived in the area for three years, said that he left to get something to eat when he saw the police arriving about 5:30 p.m. Hours later, he was sitting in his car, trying to return, watching “House of the Dragon.” He said he walks on the Greenway but now might think twice about it.
The shooting occurred in the Hedingham neighborhood in the northeast of Raleigh, where single-family homes and golf courses sit near the Neuse River Greenway, a bike and walking trail that winds through wetlands and pine groves. Residents said they heard police sirens about 4 p.m., about two hours before the police asked them remain in their homes.
“I leave my doors unlocked,” he said. “Yeah I have cameras, but I never worry about anything like that. Nothing’s ever happened.”
By 9:37 p.m., the siege was over, and the suspect was in custody, the police said. But there were so many emergency vehicles in the area that some residents were ensnared by traffic on their way home.
At 9:37 p.m., according to the police, the siege was over, with a suspect in custody.
On Eagle Trace Drive, about a mile and a half from where the shooting occurred, sirens could be heard wailing in the distance as cars inched forward and police vehicles with flashing lights nosed through.
At the later news conference, Ms. Baldwin referred to mass shootings across the country as she spoke about the Raleigh attack.
Ethan Garner, a project manager who has lived in the area for three years, said that he had left to get something to eat in the early evening. Hours later, he was sitting in his car, watching television on his phone as police officers attended to the crime scene.
“We have to end this mindless gun violence that is happening in our country,” she said, adding that there are “too many victims.” “We have to wake up. I don’t want other mayors standing here at the podium with their hearts breaking because people in their community died.”
“I leave my doors unlocked,” he said. “Yeah, I have cameras, but I never worry about anything like that. Nothing’s ever happened.”
The shooting in Raleigh was the latest reminder of rampant gun violence across the country, including mass shootings at a supermarket in Buffalo that left 10 dead in May, another in May at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers, and another shooting at a Fourth of July celebration in Highland Park, Ill., that left seven dead.
Just a day earlier, two police officers were killed and a third was wounded in Connecticut in what the authorities described as an ambush after responding to a 911 call that may have been a hoax.
Thursday’s shooting was the deadliest shooting in North Carolina in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive. In 2009, a gunman opened fire at a nursing home in Carthage, N.C., killing seven elderly patients and a nurse and injuring several other people, including a police officer.
On Thursday, neighbors struggled to make sense of the Raleigh shooting.
Anne Berry, 52, who has lived in the Avington Place neighborhood of Raleigh for more than 20 years, said helicopters had intermittently been hovering above her home for more than three hours and that it was “loud enough to feel in your chest when they get close.”
A neighbor recounted to her that when he went to walk his dog, an officer stopped and asked him if he had seen anyone dressed in camouflage and then told him to head back inside, Ms. Berry said.
Another neighbor, Brad Redd, who has lived in the area for four years, described Hedingham as a multicultural and economically diverse place with a lake and a golf course. He said he was “flabbergasted” by the shooting.
“This is the last thing I would expect over here,” he said, adding “It’s going to shake this community.”
