Raleigh officer’s career, peace of mind ended by Hedingham shooter. Pain remains.

Casey Clark grimaced as he sat down at the witness stand Wednesday, his knee hurting from the shotgun blast he took three years ago — a wound that ended his police career.

In 2022, Clark and his team from the Raleigh police Special Enforcement Unit followed Austin Thompson into thick woods near the Neuse River, trying to stop the shooting spree that had already claimed six victims in Hedingham, five of them fatally.

They followed a K-9 police dog to a hunting blind, over a fence, then to a pair of garage-like buildings when a shot rang out and dropped Clark to the ground.

Then, in a moment captured on body-camera footage, his fellow officers dragged the wounded officer out of sight to get a tourniquet onto his leg.

“I’m nauseous, but I’m good,” Clark says, moments after the shooting

“You’re gonna be alright, brother,” says another officer.

“Someone just get me up to my feet,” Clark says back. “I can go on one leg.”

And as they load the wounded officer into a car, he jokes, “Merely a flesh wound.”

The story of Clark’s shotgun wound came on the second day of testimony in a sentencing hearing that will decide whether Thompson, 15 at the time of Hedingham mass shooting, spends his life in prison.

Now a real estate agent in Michigan, Clark turned to Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgway and asked him to keep Thompson from repeating his crimes.

“I wanted to point out that this is what a 15-year-old can do with minimal life experience and ability,” Clark said. “I don’t want to see what a grown adult that has decades of time to plan his next assault (can do).”

Thompson pleaded guilty Jan. 21 to five counts of first-degree murder. He sat expressionless in court as prosecutors described him shooting his older brother James in the back of the head, then stabbing him 49 times.

From there, prosecutors said, Thompson packed a backpack full of ammunition and survival supplies and shot two women outside his house, killing neighbor Nicole Connors and her dog.

The rampage then stretched across the neighborhood, where Thompson shot police officer Gabriel Torres in his car just as his wife and daughter were coming home.

As neighbors hunkered down, hearing news reports, Thompson headed onto the Neuse River greenway and killed Mary Marshall and Susan Karnatz. He holed up inside a shed and fired at officers who surrounded him, wounding one of them, then suffered a gunshot wound to the head — apparently self-inflicted.

He continues to suffer from seizures, his attorneys said in court filings last month, and wanted to plead in order to spare both the victims’ families and his own relatives the pain of a trial. His age will likely factor into sentencing.

Clark, meanwhile, can no longer work as a police officer, cutting short his lifelong ambition.

“My knee will give out on me without any warning,” he said. “Standing, walking, I just might drop.”

The shot Thompson fired hit him at the top of his tibia, and the pellet remains in his knee. Sometimes it feels like electricity coursing through his leg.

“It will feel like someone is drilling into my bone,” he said.

The shooting left a deeper impact on his family, especially his wife.

“She’s constantly, instead of being the happy-go-lucky woman that I married, where she was able to walk down the street, no stress,” Clark testified, his voice shaking. “Now she knows everyone is a threat.”

When he reaches for his leg, he said, his son asks, “Is that because you were shot?”

Along with that, the memory of that day in 2022 lives on through footage posted on YouTube, where anyone can see the moment that interrupted his life.

This story was originally published February 4, 2026 at 2:24 PM.

Josh Shaffer

The News & Observer

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Josh Shaffer is a general assignment reporter on the watch for “talkers,” which are stories you might discuss around a water cooler. He has worked for The News & Observer since 2004 and writes a column about unusual people and places.