A call to remember Raleigh shooting victims as families seek answers in investigation

The Hedingham neighborhood is still mourning, days after a shooting rampage that killed five people and a dog and injured two others.

While there are some signs of a return to normalcy — the Neuse River Greenway trail reopened Monday — questions remain about what transpired Thursday.

Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson said Friday that a five-day report would be issued to offer updates, how suspect Austin Thompson was captured and other details about the mass shooting that rattled the city.

Tracey Howard, whose wife, Nicole Connors, and dog were killed, said he is frustrated by the process of waiting for his wife’s body to be released. Until that happens, he can’t plan a funeral, he told The News & Observer. He created a GoFundMe to help “give her the burial and memorial service she deserves” in her home state of Ohio.

“Words can’t explain how much I miss them both,” he wrote.

Others pushed to ensure the victims are remembered and that Thursday’s tragic events don’t fade from memory.

“We continue to mourn for the five lives lost last week,” Gov. Roy Cooper tweeted. “This tragedy will forever weigh on their families and friends yet it will fade from the news. We owe it to them to never forget and push even harder to stem the rising tide of gun violence.”

Sunday, runners all over posted photos of their runs and tracking devices alongside #RunForSue. On Facebook, they noted that Sue Karnatz, one of the victims, was 5.1 miles into a 7-mile run. Some people ran the same distance while others ran 1.9 miles to complete what would have been Karnatz’s course. Others ran the entire 7 miles.

At Knightdale High School, the football team began its homecoming game with heads bowed and helmets behind their backs, taking a long silent pause for the trauma that struck their school. Junior James Thompson, 16, was one of five killed in the Thursday night shooting, and his brother, sophomore Austin Thompson, is the suspect in the east Raleigh slaying.

The American flag flew at half-staff as the game kicked off after a three-day delay, and the other festivities remain postponed.

”It’s definitely a different vibe,” said senior Dante Bullock. “It’s impacted a lot of people.”

And in Downtown Raleigh, a police car draped in black cloth was set up at the Raleigh Police Department’s station at 218 W. Cabarrus St. to honor Officer Gabriel Torres, one of the people killed.

Mural painted as neighborhood memorial

In the Hedingham neighborhood, a memorial at the entrance expanded with flowers, candles and photos. To the left of the entrance, a Dallas-based artist named Roberto Marquez worked on a large-scale mural to honor the people shot. He travels across the country in the wake of different tragedies, hoping his paintings might help mend communities in anguish.

Last week, he was working on a project in Fort Myers, Fla., a memorial amid the wreckage wrought by Hurricane Ian, when he learned of Raleigh’s mass shooting.

“So I came up here to see what I could do,” Marquez told The News & Observer.

He set to work on a sprawling piece, a colorful tribute to Hedingham’s lost lives. The two-canvas painting features five coffins, one for each victim. The coffins are open, but no bodies lie within. After speaking with the victims’ friends, families and neighbors, Marquez added items the they had loved: dogs, doughnuts, saxophones, flowers.

“I wanted to show what things represented these people, who they were,” Marquez said.

The mural also includes aberrations from the artist’s style, and they’re Marquez’s favorite parts.

“I always invite the community to paint things, too,” he said. “They’re always scared. They say, ‘No, no, I’ll mess it up.’ But they don’t. They make it better.”

Some funky flowers and misshapen hearts are the handiwork of neighborhood children who walked by the mural on their way home from school.

Their contributions ensure the painting “is really part of the community, from the community,” Marquez said.

Jessica Banov contributed to this report.

This story was originally published October 17, 2022 at 7:08 PM.