Judge sentences teen to life without parole for fatally shooting 5 in North Carolina

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

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

Equipped with firearms and wearing camouflage, Thompson then fatally shot four others — including an off-duty city police officer — in his neighborhood and along a greenway. He was arrested in a shed after a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.

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

Thompson, who did not speak in court, was led away in handcuffs after the sentencing. Family members of the shooting victims cried as the sentence was handed down. Thompson’s attorneys announced plans to appeal the sentence.

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

“It’s hard to conceive of a greater display of malice,” Ridgeway said, adding that months of planning and fantasizing by Thompson to carry out the rampage also confirmed that Thompson is the rare juvenile offender “whose crimes reflect irreparable corruption.”

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

The note said 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.”

Thompson “cannot tell you why he wrote that note the way that he did,” defense lawyer Deonte’ Thomas said, 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.”

But “he is not unredeemable, he is not incorrigible,” Thomas added in asking Ridgeway to give him the opportunity one day to tell parole commissioners he could “still be a productive person in society.”

Thomas argued that the rampage happened during a behavioral episode caused by medicine he regularly took for acne which dissociated the youth from reality. A psychiatrist who interviewed Thompson and a geneticist testified to bolster the explanation.

Ridgeway decided the evidence did not support the conclusion that Thompson’s acts happened while he entered an altered mental state induced by the medication and a genetic abnormality.

Prosecutors dismissed the medication argument as weak and highlighted Thompson’s internet search history on his phone and computer leading up to the attack. They said it included school shootings and were related to guns, assaults and bomb-making materials.

Nicole Connors, 52; Raleigh police Officer Gabriel Torres, 29; Mary Marshall, 34; and Susan Karnatz, 49, also were killed in the rampage. Two other people were wounded, including another police officer involved in the search for Thompson.

“In the blink of an eye, everything changed for those people and for the people that they left behind,” Wake County assistant prosecutor Patrick Latour said Thursday while urging a sentence with no potential parole. “And the thing that made it change was not some acne medication. It was the defendant’s knowing, researched, well thought out, planned, decisive actions.”

The judge heard from people like Jasmin Torres, the widow of Gabriel Torres and the mother of their 5-year-old daughter. She asked Ridgeway to sentence Thompson to life without parole, calling him a “monster.”

“Not one of us surviving victims, our families, our friends, our community should ever have to worry about a future where his barbaric self is set free,” Torres said last week.

Thompson’s parents testified they couldn’t explain why their son committed the violence, 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 that authorities said was found when his son was arrested. He received a suspended sentence and probation.

“We both lost our children, one at the hand of the other. We never saw this coming and still cannot make sense of it,” mother Elise Thompson said last week while telling the families of shooting victims she will “forever be sorry for the pain that this has caused you.”