EXCLUSIVE: Anguished Raleigh mom found body of her son, 16, after he was shot dead by his 15 year-old brother, who went on to massacre four others

• Elise Thompson, 52, found her son James, 16, dead inside their home after he was shot by his 15-year-old brother Austin Thompson 
•  According to neighbors, she didn’t even turn into her driveway before rushing into the family home
• Austin blasted his five victims with a shotgun, leaving two critically injured
• Thompson’s other victims have been named as Nicole Connors, 52, Susan Karnatz, 49, Mary Marshall, 35, and off-duty police officer Gabriel Torres, 29
• On Saturday, the Thompson home was the only part of the neighborhood to remain cordoned off with crime scene tape. Police cars guard it front and back
• Sources described the family as ‘just a regular family' and no one reported seeing any ‘red flags’ in the days or weeks before the killings

The mother of a 15 year-old mass-murderer was first on the scene after her son shot his older brother dead, neighbors have revealed. 

DailyMail.com has exclusively learned that killer Austin Thompson’s mother Elise was first on the scene of her son’s death in Raleigh, North Carolina on Thursday evening.

She returned home to find James, 16, shot dead in the bathroom of the family home.

Pictures obtained by DailyMail.com show 52-year-old Elise Thompson’s blue Honda CRV still parked where she left it on the street opposite her front door after arriving at the scene in a panic. 

According to neighbors, she didn’t even turn into her driveway before rushing into the family home.

Police had yet to arrive on the scene, a two-mile area that was swiftly cordoned off as the nightmare unfolded.

Fifteen-year-old Thompson blasted his victims with a shotgun, shooting his own brother first before going on his deadly spree that killed five and left two injured, one critically.

He then barricaded himself in a building, and was later found with a gunshot wound to his head. Thompson remains in hospital, and will be charged as an adult with five murders if he survives.

His neighbors say the teenager was quiet - but that he caught their attention by walking the streets of the neighborhood at 4:30am wearing his book bag, even though school didn't start until hours later.  

Close to 100 members of the small community of Hedingham came together for a candlelit vigil at 7pm Saturday evening.

They stood in the gathering dusk on the grass outside Beacon Baptist church barely ten minutes from where Thompson began his shooting spree.

Pastor Tim Rabon led the prayers recognizing that friends, neighbors and acquaintances of those who died or were injured - as well as those who knew the shooter himself - stood before him in the crowd.

‘All of us have been affected in some way,’ he noted. ‘By these tragic acts, these violent acts and we are all probably asking questions that start with one of two words, “How?” or “Why?”

‘We are gathered here to seek answers, not the sort of answers given by politicians or offered by the news media [but those provided by] a God that wants to help us.’

Five candles were lit on an altar – representing the five lives lost, all of whom were named in turn before a minute of silence was observed. There was an audible reaction of shock when James Thompson’s name and age – just 16 – was read aloud.

Prayers were also said for the two victims who were injured and survived one of whom, Marcille Lynn Gardner, remains in intensive care.

Speaking to DailyMail.com ahead of the short vigil Pastor Rabon said that the Thompson family were not among his congregation, but that one parishioner lived just three doors down from Officer Torres, shot dead as he headed out to his shift.

He said, ‘She got into her home and had closed the door just two minutes before she heard the shooting.’

The parishioner whom he did not name saw the ‘baby-faced’ killer as Thompson ran past her home before shooting dead two further victims.

She is, according to the pastor, still dealing with the trauma of what she witnessed.

Like so many, he added, she is still struggling to process just how close the ‘evil that invaded the community on Thursday afternoon,’ came to her door.

Police received a flurry of 911 calls starting at 5.13pm on Thursday from panicked residents of the Hedlingham area reporting an active shooter in the quiet north Raleigh neighborhood. 

Thompson’s other victims have been named as neighbor Nicole Connors, 52, Susan Karnatz, 49, Mary Marshall, 35, and off-duty police officer Gabriel Torres, 29.

Casey Joseph Clark, 33, and Marcille Gardner, 59 were injured. Clark was taken to hospital, but has since returned home. Gardner remains in critical condition.

Speaking from the front yard of his clapboard home just two doors down from the Thompson residence, Tracey Howard, 57, husband of Nicole Connors, recalled how spent shotgun casings littered the ground when he returned home to find his wife and her little dog, Sami, dead on the porch. Her friend, Marcille Gardner, lay grievously injured in his front yard.

He said: ‘I was coming home from the store, and I pulled into the driveway, and I saw my friend, we call her Lynne, but her name is Marcille, laying on the ground.

‘My wife was on the porch with the dog. I don’t know what was happening but maybe Lynne was walking back home and got caught in the crossfire,' he said. ‘It was a shotgun (that shot them). I saw spent shotgun casings all over the ground.’

According to Howard, his wife had taken her close friend out for an early birthday dinner at a nearby restaurant and must have been gunned down just minutes before he arrived back.

He told DailyMail.com: ‘I could hear sirens in the background, so I wasn’t the first to call 911 but there were no police there yet.’

Asked about his relationship with the Thompson family, Howard said he didn’t know them well. He used to speak to patriarch Alan, 59, in passing about college football or wish him a good day.

Chillingly, he remembers regular exchanges with Austin. 

‘I knew him as a kid a couple of houses down who would walk down the back [path] from school and I’d be sitting out on the back porch and you know, I’d say: “Hey what’s up?” and sometimes he would speak and sometimes he wouldn’t.’

When asked how he felt about the family now, Howard admitted: ‘I don’t know how to feel.

‘On one hand I’m sorry they lost a son. On the other hand, I don’t want to get political, but a kid that age should never have had access to that gun,' he said. ‘I don’t care if you go hunting or whatever, [but] that gun should not have been something he could get his hands on.’

Thompson was taken into custody after a protracted stand-off during which he was holed up in a barn some six miles from his home.

He sustained a serious gunshot wound to the head and remains in critical condition. It is not yet known whether Thompson shot himself or was shot by police.

On Saturday, the Thompson home was the only part of the neighborhood to remain cordoned off with crime scene tape. Police cars guard it front and back.

Detectives have so far not found any social media footprint for the younger Thompson boy, but are sifting through ‘written material’ taken from the family home in an attempt to make some sense of what happened.

One neighbor, who asked not to be named, recalled Austin and James kids who ‘played ball in the street with the rest of the neighborhood kids.’

He told DailyMail.com: ‘They were sporty and so the other kids liked playing with them. Austin was livelier than James, he was younger, I suppose.

‘If there was any issue of mental health problems then they kept it in house. I never saw or heard anything untoward.’

He described the family as ‘just a regular family.’ 

‘They went to work and school, and you’d see them coming home or to say good morning to,' he said. ‘They got all smart and went to church every morning. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what happened here.’

But another, who went to school with the brothers described them as ‘often distant’ to the point that he once asked James if the boys were related.

The former schoolmate at Knightdale High School where James was a junior said: ‘I was in the same year as James, but we didn’t have any classes together.

‘We’d get the bus together, sometimes they would sit together, sometimes they wouldn’t. They were kind of distant from each other to be brothers. I even asked James once if they were related because they looked alike, and he said they weren’t.’

Another recalled the ‘baby-faced’ killer as a strange kid who walked around at 4.30am with a book bag and helped his father, who was a handyman, with odd jobs.

None reported seeing any ‘red flags’ in the days or weeks before the killings.