The North Carolina teenager who killed his brother and gunned down four neighbors in 2022 pleaded guilty to the slayings on Wednesday, just weeks ahead of his schedule trial.
Austin Thompson, now 18, wore a burgundy quarter-zip sweater with a collared shirt as he pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a law enforcement officer.
Thompson told Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway he was under medication but that it did not impact his decision to plead guilty on Wednesday.
A 15-year-old Thompson, armed with a .22-caliber rifle, fatally shot and stabbed his brother James Thompson inside their Raleigh home, touching off the murder spree at about 4:20 p.m. on Oct. 13, 2022.
He went on to kill Nicole Connors, 52, Gabriel Torres, 29, Mary Marshall, 34, and Susan Karnatz, 49, who had all randomly encountered the gunman around the Hedingham neighborhood.
Torres was a Raleigh police officer who was pulling out of his driveway, on his way to work, when he was fatally shot by Thompson. Torres didn’t have a chance to pull a weapon when he was hit by shotgun fire at close range, prosecutors said.
When pursuing officers and police dogs tracked down Thompson, he shot himself in the head but survived that wound and was taken to the hospital, prosecutors said.
Showing no apparent emotion, Thompson looked straight forward or down as a prosecutor describe the killings on Wednesday afternoon.
Thompson was scheduled to go to trial for the murders in February.
The judge set Feb. 2 for a sentencing hearing that could take multiple days.
He could be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Thompson was a minor when these crimes were committed, thus taking capital punishment off the table.
