Mother, wife, teacher, runner: Raleigh mass shooting victim Sue Karnatz remembered for kindness and compassion
On Oct. 13, 2022, Tom Karnatz and his wife, Sue, did what they would do on most days – they went for a run on the Neuse River Greenway near their east Raleigh home. They set off in opposite directions, an hour apart.
“She ran that way to the north, and when I went to the trail I went to the south,” he remembers.
As he ran, Tom Karnatz noticed a growing commotion. “There were helicopters in the sky,” he says.
When he got home, his wife had not yet returned. He worried, he texted.
"I assumed at that point that she was just on the far side of what was closed off and she had no way of getting home," he said.
With his father, Tom Karnatz left home to head toward the heavy police presence, hoping to meet up with Sue. After a few hours of waiting, officers told him she was one of the five victims killed by a gunman on a shooting spree.
He says, "The single toughest thing that I had to do in the whole thing was after that my dad and I went home and told the boys that their mom was dead. There’s no way to sugar coat that."
In an instant, life for Tom Karnatz and the three boys he and Sue were raising lost some of its light. Those boys are now 15, 14 and 11 years old.
"Sometimes people will say ‘Oh does it get easier?’ And I don’t know that it does," Tom Karnatz told WRAL News a year after the mass shooting that rocked all of Raleigh.
A makeshift memorial still stands along the greenway where Sue was killed. People leave painted stones and messages of love.
Tom Karnatz returned to running the trail the day after the tragedy.
"It’s always been kind of a mental health check. It helps me deal with stress of work and things so I thought I’d continue with that," he said.
After a few days, he wanted to see the spot where Sue died. Now the memorial is part of his regular route.
"I run by that probably a couple times a week," Tom Karnatz says.
"Sometimes I go by and I feel sorry for myself, and other times I’m happy for all the love that we had. Sometimes, a lot of times, I just kind of run by ... and say hi, and it’s not a big deal.”
Austin Thompson, now 16, is charged with murder in the death of Sue Karnatz and four others on that day, and with attempted murder and assault for injuries to two others.
A focus on family, not the courts
Tom Karnatz made it clear that he is not interested in closely following the criminal case in the courts.
"I know he can’t get the death penalty, but even if he could and it were possible, it still wouldn’t matter to me because it doesn’t help me at all one way or the other," Karnatz said of Thompson.
He is instead focused on harnessing Sue’s strength, patience and kindness as he tries to give their boys the best life he can.
“It was really her mission to be a mother," he says, "That’s what she always wanted to do.
“One of the things I knew about Sue when she was alive is that she was very kind and considerate and compassionate, the best wife and best friend that I could imagine," Karnatz says.
"I figure if I can be kinder to other people it’s not going to change the world but it might make somebody’s life a little better. I’d like to see more people do that."
