Accusations fly in new motions in Hedingham civil case. When will a trial occur?
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- New motions were filed in the Hedingham shooting civil case this week.
- All parties filed a consent motion to delay the July trial to January 2027.
- The plaintiffs are also asking a judge compel Capitol Special Police to produce evidence.
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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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The private security company assigned to patrol the Hedingham neighborhood the day of a 2022 mass shooting allegedly knew the guard on duty wasn’t familiar with the area, according to new court documents filed in a civil suit Thursday.
The victims’ loved ones and survivors of the October 2022 shooting in Raleigh’s Hedingham neighborhood filed the lawsuit against multiple involved parties in October 2024, The News & Observer previously reported.
The complaint alleges the Hedingham homeowners’ association, the neighborhood’s property management company, and the shooter’s parents were aware that then-15-year-old Austin Thompson posed a threat to residents. The suit further claims that Capitol Special Police, the private security company hired by the homeowners’ association, was negligent and didn’t properly protect the neighborhood that day or in the months preceding the shooting.
Thompson, now 18, killed five people, including his older brother, and seriously injured two in a shooting spree throughout the southeast Raleigh neighborhood. He suffered serious brain damage in a shootout with police in a shed that evening. Thompson pleaded guilty to all charges against him in January and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in February.
The civil suit was scheduled to go to trial in July, but the motions filed this week could change that. Here’s what they say.
Asking for a continuance
The first motion this week was a consent motion from all parties requesting the trial be delayed to January 2027.
“The parties conferred at mediation and believe additional time is needed for both discovery and dispositive motion practice and trial,” wrote Camila DeBoard, counsel for Capitol Special Police, in the April 28 filing.
Discovery is the process of exchanging information to be presented at trial. Dispositive motions ask a judge to resolve all or some of the issues before trial.
The plaintiffs and defendants were at an impasse after a 9 1/2-hour settlement conference in March, The N&O previously reported.
Austin Thompson’s pending appeal of his sentence in the criminal case also affects the civil suit, the motion states.
A hearing date on the motion to continue hadn’t been set as of Friday afternoon, though a notice filed this week said the hearing could occur May 7, May 18 or May 22.
Allegations of suppressing evidence
The next motion in the case this week came Thursday, when the plaintiffs requested a judge order Capitol Special Police to provide certain evidence or sanction the company.
The motion centers on GPS tracking of Capitol Special Police vehicles and emails to the company about the Hedingham neighborhood. The plaintiffs are seeking GPS tracking data for employee Nicole Locke — the guard on duty during the shooting — which Capitol Special Police said it no longer has.
The company told the plaintiffs it doesn’t store GPS data “unless there is a specific personnel-related reason to do so,” according to the motion. Camera footage from the vehicles was also overwritten unless the company saw a reason to save it, which it did not after the Hedingham shooting, the motion alleges.
“Under CSP’s contract with Defendant Hedingham Community Association, CSP contracted to provide GPS tracking data for officers working at Hedingham so that officers’ movements and locations were documented and accounted for,” the motion states.
The plaintiffs are requesting a judge order Capitol Special Police to produce GPS data from Locke’s company vehicle or impose sanctions on the company for interfering with evidence by deleting it.
In addition to the GPS data, the plaintiffs are also seeking emails received by or sent by Capitol Special Police employees regarding the Hedingham neighborhood, including a complaint about the Thompson family purportedly received before the shooting.
“In an interview with local media, Mr. Roy Taylor, the self-appointed ‘Chief of Police’ for CSP, admitted that CSP had received a complaint about the Thompson family,” the motion states. “To date, no record of this complaint has ever been produced, and in fact, Mr. Taylor has since changed his tune and has now claimed that no complaint about the Thompson family was ever received.”
The motion cites a link to a YouTube video that no longer works in support of that allegation. It’s not clear which outlet Taylor allegedly spoke with or when he allegedly made that statement.
Taylor testified that Capitol Special Police switched from GoDaddy to Google in May 2023 for web services, and many emails were not saved as a result, including emails the plaintiffs are interested in.
“To this day, Plaintiffs have never received a single email from CSP in discovery from before or around the time of the shooting, let alone the complaint CSP received about the Thompson family prior to the shooting,” the motion states.
Capitol Special Police employees were instructed to save and migrate over any emails they wanted to keep when the provider switch occurred, according to the motion.
The motion ultimately argues the plaintiffs need the data because Locke’s testimony can’t be trusted, citing her felony conviction in January on a charge of bribery of an official. She was sentenced to a year of supervised probation as part of a plea arrangement, The N&O previously reported.
The charge stemmed from Locke’s interactions with a man in the Durham County jail, where Locke worked after the shooting, awaiting trial on a murder charge. That detainee, Darrius Tyson, told prosecutors he was the “highest-ranking Blood gang member” in the state, The N&O reported. Locke faced multiple felony charges after reportedly bringing Tyson food and batteries for a cellphone, as well as taking a $500 bribe.
Was security company negligent?
The plaintiffs’ motion also alleges that Capitol Special Police didn’t properly patrol the Hedingham neighborhood before or during the shooting.
That includes an allegation that Locke wasn’t allowed by the company to carry a firearm the day of the shooting, but was anyway, and was “inadvertently” assigned to patrol the neighborhood that day.
“[Locke] testified this may have been only her second or third Hedingham shift,” the motion states. “There are serious questions as to whether she should have been working as an armed officer at all on the day of the shooting.”
Locke was allegedly late to her 4 p.m. shift the day of the shooting, texting her supervisor that she expected to arrive at Hedingham by 5 p.m., according to the motion.
“Locke testified that after doing an inspection of her patrol vehicle, the drive from Triangle Town Center to Hedingham was approximately 15 minutes — putting her arrival time in the neighborhood after Austin shot his first victim, his brother, at around 4:50 p.m.,” the motion says.
Locke didn’t call 911 to report the shooting until 5:18 p.m., which she testified was because she initially thought the gunshots she heard might have been someone hunting, according to the motion. The homeowners’ association board president testified no hunting was allowed in Hedingham or the city of Raleigh.
Residents and property management company employees alike believed Capitol Special Police officers were off-duty police officers, according to the motion.
“One of the on-site office workers from Defendant HRW described CSP’s vehicles as police-car-looking patrol cars,” the motion states. “The Community Manager from HRW stated that the patrol cars had the word ‘police’ on them.”
Jasmin Torres, the widow of Raleigh Police Officer Gabriel Torres, testified she expected Capitol Special Police employees to act like police, noting “police” was on their uniforms and vehicles, according to the motion. Gabriel Torres was killed during the shooting as he left for his shift that evening.
The homeowners’ association had reportedly received complaints before the shooting that Capitol Special Police officers were “too stationary and not visible enough,” including allegations that officers would sit at the neighborhood’s athletic club for hours at a time.
“The 2020 action list marked as an exhibit at multiple depositions reflects board dissatisfaction with CSP, route-map work, management working with patrol officers on reporting, and management monitoring progress,” the motion states.
A witness for the homeowners’ association testified “there were no centralized logs for crime complaints, shots-fired incidents, or dangerous-resident complaints,” while another witness testified the neighborhood didn’t have any procedures for responding to violence, the motion alleges.
Could a judgment be coming?
The Hedingham Community Association and HRW, the property management company, each filed motions for summary judgment Friday, court records show.
A summary judgment allows a judge to resolve a case, or issues in the case, without going to trial.
Both defendants argued in their motions that “no genuine issue of material fact exists” to support the complaint.
A hearing date on that motion had not been set as of Friday afternoon.
This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 2:00 PM.
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