‘We don’t have answers’: Neighborhood reels after fatal attacks

The crime scene in Raleigh on Friday stretched over a span of 2 miles, through streets of two-story duplexes, ending on a greenway usually packed during the day with people biking or taking their dogs for a stroll.

The day before, authorities said, an armed 15-year-old boy set off on a rampage through the neighborhood, fatally shooting five people and injuring two others, his path made clear by the victims found scattered behind him. Now, the normally calm neighborhood was crowded with law enforcement officials trying to piece together what had motivated the suspect, who is hospitalized in critical condition.

The burst of violence has plunged Raleigh into a familiar agony as it has become the latest American community forced to grapple with a mass shooting.

“Why?” Ginny Marshall said simply.

Her daughter, Mary Marshall, 34, was killed late Thursday afternoon as she walked Scruff, her terrier who looked like Toto from “The Wizard of Oz.” She had plans to get married in two weeks, in a small town in the North Carolina mountains.

An off-duty city police officer was also killed: Gabriel Torres, 29, who lived in the neighborhood and was on his way to work, authorities said. The other victims included Nicole Connors, 52, and Susan Karnatz, 49, whose husband, Tom, wrote in a tribute on Facebook of their plans to grow old together. “Now,” he wrote, “those plans are laid to waste.”

Local school officials also named James Thompson, 16, as a victim; he was a junior at Knightdale High School.

Two other people were wounded in the shootings, Chief Estella Patterson of the Raleigh Police Department said: a 59-year-old woman who was in critical condition and a police officer who was treated at a hospital and released.

The suspect, whose identity has not been disclosed by authorities, was taken into custody after what officials described as a long and tense standoff. It was unclear how and when he had been injured.

WRAL-TV, a station covering Raleigh, reported Friday that prosecutors planned to pursue a case against him as an adult.

Police did not say whether any of the victims knew the assailant or provide any details about what kind of gun he used.

President Joe Biden, in a statement Friday, called for more legislation, including a ban on assault rifles.

[This article originally appeared in The New York Times.]