A North Carolina teen accused of killing five people in a 2022 mass shooting in Raleigh will plead guilty this week to avoid a trial.
Attorneys for 18-year-old Austin Thompson wrote in a court filing that he wants to plead guilty to all charges to spare the community any more pain than what he already inflicted when he opened fire in the city’s Hedingham neighborhood, killing five and wounding another on Oct. 13, 2022.
A police officer was later wounded in a subsequent standoff with Thompson.
Thompson was charged as an adult on five counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of assault of an officer with a gun.
Prosecutors said Thompson shot and stabbed his brother James in their home before shooting four neighbors while dressed in camouflage and carrying multiple weapons. He also shot and killed Officer Gabriel Torres, who encountered Thompson while he was on his way to begin his shift with the police department.
Thompson was located later in a shed and arrested after an hours-long standoff.
Travis Long/AP
Law enforcement officers congregate outside an armored vehicle at the Aldi on New Bern Avenue in Raleigh after five people were shot and killed in the Hedingham Neighborhood and Nuese River Trail area in Raleigh, N.C., Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Travis Long)
“Austin was 15 years old when these events occurred,” his attorneys’ filing reads, according to ABC11. “While the serious brain injury he suffered has made it such that Austin cannot explain why he committed this shooting, he has always accepted that he did this. He recognizes the deep pain he has caused the victims’ families as well as his own family.”
The brain injury was the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound before Thompson was arrested. The legal proceedings against him were delayed while he recovered from his injuries.
Nearly a dozen guns and more than 150 boxes of ammunition were later found in Thompson’s family home. In 2024, Thompson’s father, Alan, pleaded guilty to improperly storing a handgun that was found with his son when he was apprehended. He received a suspended sentence and probation.
A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday where Austin is expected to enter his guilty plea. He’ll be sentenced at a separate hearing in February.
“Austin understands he can never change what happened, but he hopes that pleading as charged and moving into a sentencing hearing only will allow for the victims, the community, and his family to be spared a trial, and he hopes that the material presented at the sentencing hearing brings as much peace and closure as possible,” his attorneys wrote.
The trial had been scheduled to begin on Feb. 2. Due to Thompson’s age at the time of the mass shooting, the death penalty would not have been an option.
