RALEIGH, NC — At least five people were fatally shot on Thursday as a 15-year-old boy carved traces of bloodshed through a residential area in Raleigh, authorities said, leaving behind a more protracted crime scene two miles and caused extensive investigation to determine the motives of the attacks.
“We don’t have an answer as to why this tragedy happened,” Sheriff Estella Patterson of the Raleigh Police Department told reporters at a briefing Friday morning.
The dead included a city police officer, Gabriel Torres, 29, who was on his way to work when he was shot Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Patterson said. She identified the other victims as a 52-year-old woman, a 49-year-old woman, a 35-year-old woman and a 16-year-old boy.
Authorities said the suspected gunman, who has not been identified, was in hospital in critical condition. It is not clear when or how he was injured. Two other people were injured in the shooting, Sheriff Patterson said: a 59-year-old man was in critical condition and a police officer was treated at the hospital and released.
It was not immediately clear if any of the victims knew the gunman, and the sheriff did not provide any details about the type of gun he used.
The shooting happened in the Hedingham neighborhood in northeast Raleigh, whose homes and golf course are located near the Neuse River Greenway, a bike and walking trail that winds through marshes and pine trees .
When police responded late on Thursday afternoon, they arrived and found the bodies of two victims on a street lined with tidy duplexes, and later found others scattered throughout the neighborhood. and on a nearby road, authorities said.
The attacks prompted authorities to urge people to stay in their homes or stay away from the vicinity as police began to sweep. Eventually, police said the gunman was brought under control, and by 9:37 p.m., he was arrested.
“It’s been a long stalemate, a long situation,” Sheriff Patterson said.
The outbreak of violence has thrust Raleigh into a familiar pain, as the latest American community is forced to grapple with the aftermath of a mass shooting.
“There are a number of families in our community who woke up this morning without their loved ones,” the mayor of Raleigh, Mary-Ann Baldwin, said at a news conference Friday morning.
“I saw the faces of Raleigh police officers last night and their pain was evident, and I know it’s happening across the city,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said Friday. . “Today, we are sad, we are angry and we want to know the answers to all the questions. Those questions will be answered – some today and more over time. “
Even as investigators are still looking to understand the motive of the attack and how it unfolded, Mr. Cooper makes it clear that elected officials need to do more to address the scourge of violence. gun force.
“We all know the core truth: No neighborhood, no parents, no children, no grandparents – not a single person – should feel this fear in their community. Nobody,” said Cooper, a Democrat, at a news conference. “As policymakers, we cannot and will not turn our backs on what happened here. We must be determined to make changes and succeed.”
In the neighborhood where the shooting took place, residents were reeling, overwhelmed by the chaos and mayhem caused by the attack, as well as by the horror of the violence that took place near their homes.
“I can’t believe this is happening in my neighborhood,” said Cheryl St. James, a nurse, said late Thursday as she inched her car through a lane of traffic pounded by police and ambulances. “It’s so scrary.”
On Eagle Trace Drive, about a mile from where the shooting occurred, sirens could be heard on Thursday night as cars inched forward and police cars with flashing lights sped past.
Ethan Garner, a project manager who has lived in the area for three years, said he left for something to eat early in the evening. Hours later, he was sitting in his car, watching television on his phone when police officers arrived at the crime scene.
“I left the door unlocked,” he said. “Yes, I have a camera, but I never worry about anything like that. Nothing ever happened. “
Vimal Patel, McKenna Oxenden and Mike Ives contribution report.
