Judge sentences teenager to life in prison without parole for shooting deaths of 5 in North Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A judge sentenced an 18-year-old teenager who admitted killing five people in a mass shooting in North Carolina to life in prison without parole Friday, rejecting arguments that he deserved a chance at parole decades from now.

Austin David Thompson was 15 years old at the time of the Oct. 13, 2022, massacre that began at his Raleigh home when he shot and stabbed his 16-year-old brother James repeatedly.

Thompson, armed with a gun and wearing camouflage, then shot four other people, including an off-duty city police officer, in his neighborhood and on the Greenway. He was arrested in the shed after shooting himself in the head.

Thompson pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and five other counts less than two weeks before his scheduled trial last month.

Thompson, who did not speak in court, was led away in handcuffs after the sentencing. After the sentence was announced, the family members of those killed in the shooting cried. Thompson’s attorneys announced plans to appeal the conviction.

Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway ruled that the judge had the option of sentencing him to life in prison with a chance for parole after at least 25 years, but Thompson did not face the death penalty given his age at the time of the crime.

“It’s hard to imagine a greater display of malice,” Ridgeway said, adding that even months of planning and imagining Thompson’s rampage confirmed that Thompson is a rare juvenile delinquent “whose crimes reflect irredeemable depravity.”

During a sentencing hearing that began last week, prosecutors revealed the previously secret contents of a handwritten note containing Thompson’s name and the date of the shooting found at his family’s home in the Hedingham subdivision.

The note says “the reason I did it is because I hate people that they are destroying the planet/earth,” adding that he killed James Thompson “because he would get in my way.”

Thompson “couldn’t tell you why he wrote that note,” said defense attorney Deonte’ Thomas, adding that he had no history of environmental-based anger. “And he can’t say why he ran through the streets of Hedingham that day terrorizing people.”

But “he’s not irredeemable, he’s not irredeemable,” Thomas urged Ridgeway to one day give parole commissioners the opportunity to see if he “can still be a productive person in society.”

Thomas argued that the incident occurred during a behavioral episode caused by medication he regularly took for acne that detached the youth from reality. A psychiatrist who interviewed Thompson and a geneticist testified to bolster the explanation.

Ridgeway ruled that the evidence did not support a conclusion that Thompson’s actions occurred when he entered a drug-induced and genetic abnormality.

Prosecutors dismissed the drug argument as weak and highlighted Thompson’s phone and computer raiding internet search history. They said it included school shootings and involved guns, assaults and bomb-making materials.

Nicole Connors, 52; Raleigh Police Officer Gabriel Torres, 29; Mary Marshall, 34; And Susan Karnatz, 49, also died in the attack. Two other people, including another police officer involved in the search for Thompson, were injured.

“In the blink of an eye, everything changed for those men and the people they left behind,” Wake County Assistant Prosecutor Patrick Latour said Thursday in urging the sentence without the possibility of parole. “And what changed that was no acne medication. It was the defendant’s knowing, researched, well-thought-out, planned, decisive actions.”

The judge heard from people like Jasmine Torres, Gabriel Torres’ widow and mother of his 5-year-old daughter. He urged Ridgeway to sentence Thompson to life without parole, calling him a “monster.”

“None of us surviving victims, our families, our friends, our communities will ever have to worry about a future freeing their barbaric selves,” Torres said last week.

Thompson’s parents testified that they could not explain why their son was violent, calling him a normal, happy kid who did well in school and showed no signs of destruction.

Thompson’s father pleaded guilty to improperly storing his handgun, which authorities said was found when his son was arrested. He received a suspended sentence and probation.

“We both lost our children, in each other’s arms. We never saw it and still can’t understand it,” mother Alice Thompson told the families of the shooting victims last week. “I will always be sorry for the pain this has caused you.”