On Thursday, the authorities in Raleigh, North Carolina, said that a male teenager was responsible for the shooting deaths of five persons, one of whom was an off-duty police officer.
The age of the shooter as well as any probable motivations have not been made public by the police as of yet, among other data. However, it was evident that the violence had shaken a middle-class neighborhood in one of the most rapidly developing cities in the United States.
Cheryl St. James, a nurse, said late Thursday night as she inched her car through the traffic created by a crush of emergency and police cars, “I can’t believe this is happening in my neighborhood. It’s terrifying.”
However, at this point of the epidemic of gun violence in the United States — in a wealthy nation where school children engage in “mass casualty” incidents— such incidents aren’t surprising any more.
At a press conference held at the Raleigh Municipal Building just before 11 o’clock in the evening, Governor Roy Cooper said, “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.”
A day earlier, terror struck six states away in Bristol, Connecticut, when two police officers were killed and a third was wounded in what the authorities described as an apparent ambush by a 35-year-old gunman who died at the scene.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, the shooting in Raleigh on Thursday was the deadliest of 17 shootings that have taken place in North Carolina so far this year.
According to the authorities, there were two more people who were injured, including a police officer who was later discharged from the hospital and another person who remained in serious condition. As of the morning of Friday, none of the victims had been recognized or identified.
The shooting was the most recent example of gun violence carried out by a young guy in the United States. The most notable event of this year has so far taken place in Uvalde, Texas, when an 18-year-old shooter opened fire inside of an elementary school, taking the lives of 19 students and two instructors.
