It has been less than 24 hours since Susan Karnatz was fatally shot by a teenage gunman in Raleigh, North Carolina, and her grieving father still can’t seem to believe his daughter is gone.
“She’s a dedicated runner, a marathoner, an ultra-marathoner,” David Butler told The Daily Beast on Friday morning, referring to Karnatz, 49, in the present tense. “She has run the Boston Marathon several times, and several other marathons around the country. She loves to run along that Neuse River trail, which is where she was when she was attacked.”
Karnatz was a school psychologist by training, although she hadn’t worked as one in recent years, Butler, 79, said from his home in Raleigh. However, she kept her certification up to date, just having renewed her credentials not long ago, according to Butler.
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“We read about all these mass killings of course, but never thought I was going to have one hit my family,” he said.
Karnatz and her husband Tom, a software engineer, were homeschooling their three boys, Butler continued. He described his now-widowed son-in-law as a “super guy,” who is also an avid runner.
The suspect, a 15-year-old boy whose identity has been confirmed to The Daily Beast by a high-ranking city official, left five people dead in a Thursday night rampage that shocked the city of 470,000.
One of the victims was identified as off-duty police officer Gabriel Torres, 29, who was heading to work when he was killed. The others were identified by authorities on Friday morning as Nicole Connors, 52, Mary Marshall, 35, and 16-year-old James Roger Thompson.
Any relationship between the shooter and his alleged victims remains unclear. The Daily Beast is withholding the suspect’s name as he has not yet been charged as an adult.
Raleigh resident Tracey Howard said he would wave and say hello to the quiet teenage boy who lived two doors down on Sahalee Way as he walked by. The boy wouldn’t always respond to his greeting.
“He was quiet. I never seen him playing with the other kids in the neighborhood,” Howard told the Daily Beast.
That same teenager, he said, allegedly did the unthinkable on Thursday night, gunning down Howard’s wife and their pet dog.
He was devastated to return home from work to find his wife, 52-year-old Nicole Connors, dead from multiple gunshot wounds on his front porch with their dog Sammy at her feet.
“She was a good person,” Howard said, visibly distraught, adding, of his neighbor, “I just can’t believe it was him,”
“I would see [the shooter] coming and going,” he said. “Just every day, regular life.”
Howard was sitting on a chair on his porch when he spoke to The Daily Beast on Friday afternoon. “If I had been home, it probably would have been me,” he said.
Mary Marshall, another victim, was about to turn 35. She was shot dead on the Neuse River trail while walking the dog she shared with fiancé Robert Steele.
Raleigh resident Susan Marcks was also on the trail Thursday, enjoying some time with her son and niece. When Marshall’s picture was released on Friday, Marcks was heartbroken to realize they had passed right by her only minutes before she was killed.
“For some reason, yesterday we decided to cut our walk short,” Marcks told The Daily Beast. “On the way back, we were going through a turn on a bridge, and I remember we moved over to let her and her dog go by.”
“Our whole city is shaken up,” she said. “We have never had anything happen like that around here.”
Two people, as well as a police dog, were also shot by the teen gunman, but survived. One of them, 59-year-old Marcel Gardner, is in critical condition at Wake Med Hospital, Raleigh Police Chief Estella D. Patterson said at a news conference. The other, a K9 officer who responded to the scene, was shot in the leg and suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
“We don’t have answers as to why this tragedy occurred,” Patterson said, noting that she had been at a conference on gun violence when she was informed an active shooter was terrorizing Raleigh.
The first 911 call came in at 5:13 p.m. on Thursday, when someone reported an active shooter in the Hedingham neighborhood. The suspect then fled to the Neuse River Greenway, part of the 1,175-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail, where additional victims, including Karnatz and Marshall, were shot and killed.
At 8 p.m., cops said they had the suspect “contained,” reportedly inside a barn behind a residence. They issued no further details until 9:37 p.m., when police tweeted that the suspect had been taken into custody.
In a televised address Thursday night, North Carolina Gov. 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 that has been committed.”
On Facebook, Karnatz’s sister posted an emotional eulogy to her lost sibling.
“She loved life and nature, and had the most gentle of hearts, protecting even the stray bug that made its way into her house,” Sharon Butler Kaivani wrote. “She loved her family fiercely and there is a big hole there now. I could be my true self with her, and when we got together, we’d revert to childhood mode sometimes, laughing until one of us cried (usually her).
“As her husband said, there are memories now where once there were plans - big plans, small plans, mundane plans. As is the case for so many who lose loved ones too soon, the tragedy seems so very senseless, and I just can’t understand it. Although we live in different cities, I am already facing countless ways that I’ll feel her absence every day.”
In the meantime, David Butler must now prepare to bury his daughter.
“She was a kind person, and a soft-spoken person, and loved animals and cared about the environment,” Butler said, his voice breaking.
The alleged gunman remains hospitalized with what the Department of Homeland Security described as life-threatening injuries. It is unknown if they were self-inflicted or if the suspect was shot by law enforcement.
