Victims, family members testify at sentencing for Raleigh mass shooter Austin Thompson
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Victims urged life sentences as court hears emotional impact and lasting harm.
- Prosecutors outlined Thompson’s 2022 rampage, five first‑degree murder pleas.
- Defense cited seizures and plea motive to spare families from a full trial.
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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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More than three years have passed since Tracey Howard arrived home to find his wife shot dead on the front porch next to her yorkie, and he could scarcely describe the pain.
But he took the witness stand Tuesday as sentencing began for Austin Thompson, the 18-year-old who pleaded guilty last month in the 2022 Hedingham mass shooting, and tried.
“Austin’s actions have broken me,” he said, remembering his wife Nicole Connors and taking a long pause. “I don’t enjoy ... I don’t enjoy the things I used to do.”
He shook his head, struggling to speak.
“I feel socially awkward, and I don’t like to go anywhere,” he said. “I feel guilty having fun without my wife. It’s left me emotionally, financially ... It’s left me unstable.”
Lynn Gardner: ‘I lost a dear friend’
Howard spoke just after Lynn Gardner, 63, who suffered shotgun wounds while walking “fur babies” with her friend Connors when Thompson opened fire.
Gardner said she spent three months in the hospital and still has shell fragments in her body, along with memory loss and a burning sensation on her tongue.
In a rare light moment, Gardner made the whole courtroom chuckle, including Thompson, when she said, “Lost some teeth. I was blessed to get a smile makeover, so my grill is right.”
She and Connors walked their dogs daily, had “girlie conversations” and had just returned from her birthday dinner at Red Lobster when she noticed a young man in camouflage pants enter her peripheral vision.
“I lost a dear friend,” she said at the sentencing hearing. “But because of who I am and what I believe in, he has given me the grace to forgive the young man who shot me. Being a Christian, I don’t just talk the talk. I walk the walk.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “I’m not forgiving to free him. I’m forgiving to free me.”
Jasmin Torres: ‘I tried to stop the bleeding’
The emotional testimony heightened as Jasmin Torres, widow of Raleigh police officer Gabriel Torres, took the stand.
Her husband worked the night shift and she would normally have missed him, she explained, but a power outage at her job had sent her home early.
“We get to see him before he leaves,” she said.
She called as she drove home with their 2-year-old daughter and heard gunshots as she approached, still on the phone with Torres.
She arrived home to find his white Honda Civic in the middle of the cul de sac, two holes in the windshield.
“I saw my husband,” she said in tears. “I saw Gabe. I saw that he was bleeding. I saw that he was in shock. His eyes were ... I can’t even describe it. He was still alive. His left leg was shaking up and down. I tried to stop the bleeding, so I had my fingers in every wound I could get to.”
She was not prepared Tuesday to make a full victim’s impact statement, common at the close of murder trials. But she told the court: “Our life has been changed forever, and my daughter didn’t deserve any of it. My husband didn’t deserve any of it. And I know I didn’t deserve any of it.”
Teen has pleaded guilty to murders
Thompson, 15 at the time of the shootings, 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 Connors and her dog.
The rampage then stretched across the neighborhood, where Thompson shot police officer 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.
“Gun was as big as the kid”
During Tuesday’s testimony, the Torreses’ neighbor Dustin Poole testified he was home with his own 2-year-old daughter when he saw a “kid” in all camouflage clothing, looking to be 10 or 11 years old and carrying a long gun.
“The gun was as big as the kid,” Poole said on video conference from Pennsylvania. “That was the alarming part to me.”
But then, Poole said, he saw the “kid” fire two shots at his friend Torres’ car.
“The kid turned and with complete accuracy and understanding where the noise was coming from, pointed the gun at me,” he said. “At that point, I was looking down the barrel of the gun.”
The sentencing hearing is scheduled to last to the end of next week
This story was originally published February 3, 2026 at 11:24 AM.
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