Raleigh shooting: 15-year-old suspect in custody after killing 5, including one officer, in North Carolina, police say

RALEIGH, NC– Five people were killed by a gunman who opened fire on a hiking trail in the North Carolina capital on Thursday and eluded officers for hours before being cornered at a home and arrested, police said.

An off-duty police officer was among those killed by the suspect, who police told ABC News was a 15-year-old boy. He was arrested around 9:37 p.m., authorities said. His identity has not been released.

The shooting erupted around 5 p.m. along the Neuse River Greenway in a residential area northeast of downtown, Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said. Officials from numerous law enforcement agencies swarmed through the area, closing roads and warning residents to stay indoors while they searched for the shooter.

Two people, including another police officer, were taken to hospitals. The officer was later released, but the other survivor remained in critical condition.

“Terror reached our front door tonight. Every community’s nightmare has come to Raleigh. This is a senseless, horrific and infuriating act of violence that has been committed,” Gov. Roy Cooper told reporters.

Authorities didn’t provide a motive, but Baldwin joined Cooper in deciphering the violence.

“We need to stop this senseless violence in America, we need to fight gun violence,” the mayor said. “We have a lot to do and tonight we have a lot to mourn.”

The Raleigh shooting was the latest in a violent week across the country. Five people were killed in a shooting at a home in Inman, South Carolina on Sunday. Two police officers were fatally shot in Connecticut on Wednesday night after they were apparently ambushed by an emergency call about possible domestic violence. Police officers were shot dead in Greenville, Mississippi this week; Decatur, Illinois; Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Central Florida. Two of those officers, one in Greenville and one in Las Vegas, were killed.

WATCH: Police officers set up a staging area to search for suspects.

Thursday’s violence was the 25th mass murder in 2022 in which victims were fatally shot, according to The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database. A mass murder occurs when four or more people are killed in addition to the perpetrator.

Brooke Medina, who lives in the Greenway neighborhood, was driving home at about 5:15 p.m. when she saw about two dozen police cars, both marked and unmarked, speeding toward the residential area, which is about 9 miles from downtown Raleigh was. Then she saw ambulances speeding the other way toward the nearest hospital.

WATCH: Hedingham residents report confusion as officers fanned out the scene

She and her husband, who were working from home with their four children, began reaching out to neighbors and discovered there was a local protection order in place.

The family closed all the shutters, locked the doors and gathered in an upstairs hallway, said Medina, who works as a vice president of communications at a think tank. The family listened to the police scanner and checked local news before heading back downstairs when the danger appeared to have moved further from their home.

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

She described the neighborhood known as Hedingham as a sprawling, dense, tree-lined community filled with single-family, semi-detached and townhouse homes that compare favorably to other parts of the Raleigh area.

Allison Greenawalt, 29, who also lives in the neighborhood, said she was sitting on the couch with her cat around 5pm when she heard “three gunshots in pretty quick succession”. She said police arrived quickly and she was grateful they were there during the chaotic hours while she was hiding in the house. Her husband, meanwhile, was trying to drive home from work after the shooting and was turned away by police who had closed nearby roads and he didn’t make it home until around 10:30 p.m., she said.

“I sat in our house for most of the evening with the lights off and the windows closed just waiting to hear that,” she said of the shooter’s arrest.

Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman of Silver Spring, Maryland and Gary D. Robertson and Allen G. Breed of Raleigh contributed to this report.

ABC News contributed to this report.