North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said he spoke to Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin and was deploying state resources to assist at the scene.

Raleigh Police (photo credit: MIHALY I. LUKACS/CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)/VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
Raleigh Police (photo credit: MIHALY I. LUKACS/CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)/VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

 

Five people including an off-duty police officer were shot dead on Thursday, prompting a massive manhunt that shut down part of the North Carolina capital of Raleigh and resulted in the suspect being “contained,” Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said.

At least two other people including a police officer were wounded and taken to hospital, Baldwin told a news conference.

“We must stop this mindless violence in America,” Baldwin said, without providing many details about the shooting spree.

Who is the suspect?

The suspected shooter was thought to be a white teenage male with a long gun, ABC News affiliate WTVD reported, adding no one had been taken into custody yet but that the suspect had been cornered in a garage by authorities.

There were multiple crime scenes associated with the active shooting situation, the report added.

Helicopter video from WRAL-TV showed more than a dozen emergency vehicles lined up on a road through a wooded area.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said he spoke to Baldwin and was deploying state resources to assist at the scene.

As reported by The Jerusalem Post