Susan Karnatz, 49: Raleigh shooting victim loved running, animals and good causes
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Raleigh mass shooting in Hedingham neighborhood
On Oct. 13, 2022, seven people were shot in Raleigh, NC, in the Hedingham neighborhood near the Neuse River Greenway Trail. Five were killed, including a Raleigh police officer. High school student Austin Thompson was charged with their murders. Read The News & Observer’s ongoing coverage of the mass shooting, Thompson’s guilty plea and ongoing civil lawsuit.
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Susan Karnatz ran at least a mile every day, enough of an athlete to finish the Boston Marathon four times, so dedicated that she once logged 43 miles in a single endurance race and walked away disappointed.
A few years back, she set a goal most runners would find unthinkable: 2,017 miles inside the 2017 calendar year — notching a bit more than 5.5 miles every day.
She made it with a day to spare.
Yet when you ask friends to describe what made her tick, they don’t talk about her best times or her longest runs. They remember how she always stopped to take pictures of deer she spotted on the greenway, or move a snail off the path so other runners wouldn’t step on it, or leave gallons of water along the trail for a homeless man who lived nearby.
Even in her most intense trials, she bothered over other living things.
“You take that track face off, and you find out what a light she is, what a kind person,” said her training partner John Tate. “We always say runners, we clean up well.”
Karnatz, 49, died in the mass shooting that killed five in east Raleigh’s Hedingham neighborhood last week, leaving behind her husband, Tom, and three sons, Malcolm, 14; Oliver, 13; and Everett, 11.
Friends and family poured into her funeral Saturday afternoon at North Raleigh Presbyterian Church, filling a sanctuary that was full of light and that was situated among towering trees and fall’s changing leaves. Glass panes in the room’s ceiling gave glimpses of the beauty and wonder of the natural world that Karnatz loved and that, as Pastor Lisa Hebacker said during the service, led her to a belief in God in her teenage years.
A native of Raleigh and graduate of Athens Drive High School, Karnatz wrapped herself around a variety of causes, and her Facebook posts consist mainly of donations she made: the Alzheimers’ Association, UNICEF or the SPCA.
She posted excitedly about a hummingbird moth she spotted, and how someone had sculpted the word “Love” out of sticks on her running trail.
Compassion for an insect; a lifelong student and teacher
She found a lost parakeet and asked friends if they knew its owner. Once, her sister Sharon wrote in an online tribute, she gave sanctuary to an insect that had wandered into her house — though this care typically didn’t extend to a rare cockroach, Pastor Hebacker jokingly noted during the funeral.
“She asked others to have compassion for all animals — even an occasional snake — and reassured us about its harmlessness,” her obituary read.
Karnatz met her husband at an NC Roadrunners Club meeting in 2005 — a moment fellow runners happily stressed, and that Hebacker mentioned during a prayer at the funeral.
“I will never forget the first time I met Sue Butler Karnatz,” wrote Kimberlie Fowler Meeker, a fellow runner. “It was at track practice on a Tuesday night and she skipped onto the track, with a big grin on her face. Our friend Tom Karnatz seemed instantly smitten and we watched as their friendship blossomed into marriage and then a family of five.”
Much of Saturday’s remembrance of Karnatz focused on her dedication to teaching and learning, which she lived out both in a professional capacity and through her patient, kind, curious and observant personality.
“I expect her adeptness as a teacher comes from having been a good student of all of the people who taught her,” Hebacker said. “Beyond that, though, not only a good student as in that SAT score of hers, I get a feeling that she was a bit of a student of the world around her, as well.”
She paused her early career work as a school psychologist to home-school her sons, gradually coaxing them into the sport she loved.
Karnatz’s friend Rebecca Hughes recalled the last time they all met, bumping into each other at the Hinson Lake Ultra Classic in September. The goal of that race: circle the 1.5-mile loop for 24 hours and rack up as much distance as possible.
“We caught up, told very bad jokes, giggling at the funny things each of us said, spotting gnomes, China cats, and crazy shirts,” Hughes told the N&O in an email. “She was so proud of her boys and what they achieved that day running-wise. We enjoyed 43 miles together, from dawn into the night, where our headlights made it look like we were running in heavy snowfall from all the dust on the trail. Sue’s feet started to blister and she called it a day at 43 miles. We hugged, said goodbye, I went on into the night. I am so grateful that our paths crossed.”
A scripture reading from the first chapter of Proverbs during the funeral perhaps touched on Karnatz’s teachings to her sons and their lasting impact.
“Hear, my child, your father’s instruction, and do not reject your mother’s teaching, for they are a fair garland upon your head and pendants for your neck.”
‘A strong bond among runners’
To the congregation gathered Saturday and others, Hebacker said, Karnatz’s teachings and lessons will also live on.
“And now I wonder what her life might teach us, even through her death,” Hebacker said. “I am sure — sure — that the circumstances surrounding Sue’s death teach us that the world still has an awful lot to learn about love.”
On the day she died, Karnatz had gone for a seven-mile run on the greenway, which stretches from Falls Dam into Johnston County, connecting Hedingham and Raleigh to the point where dogs on that trail recognize other dogs on a walk.
“That’s actually the favorite place to run because of the different scenery,” said Jack Threadgill, Roadrunners president, “and some of the coolest bridges you’ll ever see. That’s the thing about running. You’re with people for a long time, so there’s a strong bond among runners. It is shocking.”
After Karnatz died Thursday, her route incomplete at 5.1 miles, runners across Raleigh vowed to complete the last 1.9 miles over the weekend — finishing what she started, smiling at what they passed.
This story was originally published October 22, 2022 at 5:37 PM.
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