Fiancé of woman killed in Hedingham mass shooting to run for Raleigh City Council
Rob Steele, whose fiancé was killed in last fall’s Hedingham mass shooting, says he will run for Raleigh City Council in 2024.
Steele, 39, said he decided to seek one of two at-large seats on the City Council after Mary Marshall was killed and meeting with local officials. Marshall was one of seven people shot, five fatally, on Oct. 13, 2022, in the northeast Raleigh neighborhood.
“The more I learned, and the more I looked into issues, the more I realized that there were things that needed to be fixed that aren’t getting addressed the way that I think that they need to get addressed,” Steele said in an interview with The News & Observer.
“And if Mary hadn’t died, would I be running for city council right now? Probably not, because I probably would still be ignorant of the issues,” he said. “But Mary’s death led to me becoming cognizant of the issues that the city is facing. And I’m just not the type of person to see a problem and not try to fix it.”
After Marshall died, Steele said he met with politicians at the national, state and local levels. Most of those meetings were productive, he said. He met with Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin and said he told her about a number of concerns ranging from an alert system for violent crime to clearing back bushes in a roadway median.
“She said all the right things, but she didn’t do anything,” Steele said. “She didn’t take any of the information I brought up to her to (the) City Council. None of them addressed any of it because the rest of them weren’t made aware of it.”
After more than two months of inaction, Steele said he reached out to city staff himself.
“It gave me the feeling that my representative government at the local level doesn’t care about me,” he said. “It’s not the way it should be. So I started looking deeper into issues. Affordable housing, parks, transportation issues. And I discovered the secret vote to defund and unsupport the citizens advisory councils. I realized that people like me, people who are trying to survive in this city on a single income, we’re not being represented.”
Baldwin said she was sorry to hear Steele’s frustration.
“This was a difficult time for all,” she said. “Our community engagement team took an active role in providing support for the victims and their families, as did the Raleigh Police Foundation. We held a vigil to honor and remember those we lost. We continue to hold the victims in our prayers and are open to suggestions for future action.”
Steele previously spoke at a City Council meeting and was critical of the city for not issuing an emergency alert during the mass shooting. He called on the entire council to resign during the April meeting.
Steele is a property manager for Lampe Management and Navy veteran. His campaign website is Rob4Raleigh.com.
Most municipal elections are held in odd-numbered years. But the Raleigh City Council asked the state in 2021 for its elections to be moved in even-numbered years.
All eight seats on the Raleigh City Council will be up in the Nov. 5, 2024, election.
This story was originally published July 24, 2023 at 10:15 AM.
