Police: White, male juvenile killed 5 in North Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. — A gunman opened fire along a walking trail in North Carolina’s capital city on Thursday, killing five people before leading police on an hourslong manhunt that forced residents across multiple neighborhoods to take shelter in their homes.

The suspect is a white juvenile male and has been arrested, police in North Carolina said Thursday night. An off-duty police officer was among those killed, said Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin.

Raleigh Police Lt. Jason Borneo said that the suspect was taken into custody around 9:37 p.m. Thursday, hours after the shooting. His identity and age weren’t released.

Authorities have said that he opened fire along a walking trail in a residential area northeast of downtown.

“Tonight terror has reached our doorstep. The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh. This is a senseless horrific and infuriating act of violence that has been committed,” Gov. Roy Cooper told reporters.

Baldwin told reporters that multiple people were shot on the Neuse River Greenway around 5 p.m., and that the police department told her around 8 p.m. that the suspect had been “contained” at a residence in the area.

Numerous police vehicles and multiple ambulances had swarmed the Hedingham neighborhood starting in the late afternoon, and officers remained in place for hours during an apparent manhunt. Details of what happened remained scant by early evening.

“State and local officers are on the ground and working to stop the shooter and keep people safe,” Cooper had tweeted shortly before 7 p.m.

Earlier, WakeMed Hospital spokesperson Deb Laughery said at least four people connected to the shooting were being treated at the hospital, but no other information was immediately available.

Police closed off several streets in the area, and numerous law enforcement vehicles could be seen parked both in the street and in the driveways of two-story homes. The neighborhood borders the Neuse River Greenway Trail, and is about 9 miles from Raleigh's downtown.

The Raleigh Police Department said it was “on the scene of an active shooting” in a statement via Twitter, and advised residents in multiple neighborhoods to stay indoors.

Brooke Medina was driving home at around 5:15 p.m. when she saw about two dozen police cars, both marked and unmarked, race toward her neighborhood as she got off the highway. She then saw ambulances speeding the other direction, toward the closest hospital.

She and her husband, who was working from home with their four children, started reaching out to neighbors and realized there was a shelter-in-place order.

The family closed all of their window blinds, locked the doors and congregated in an upstairs hallway together, said Medina, who works as a communications vice president at a think tank. The family listened to the police scanner and watched local news before going back downstairs once the danger seemed to have moved further away from their home.

“We’re just going to hunker down for the rest of the night and be very vigilant. Keep all of our lights on, doors locked,” she said.

She described Hedingham as a sprawling, dense, tree-lined neighborhood that’s full of single-family homes, duplexes and townhomes that are more moderately priced compared to other parts of the Raleigh area.

Medina said she often takes her kids on bike rides along the greenway during the day, but typically brings pepper spray along just in case.

“There’s a lot of places one could disappear,” she said.