The suspect managed to elude police officers for several hours before being cornered in a house and arrested.
A 15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of killing five people in North Carolina and is in a critical condition in hospital, US police have said.
The boy, who has not been named, is alleged to have fatally shot two people in the state’s capital city of Raleigh before opening fire on a walking trail, killing three more people, and wounding two others.
Among those killed in the Thursday night attack were a 16-year-old boy named James Roger Thompson, and a 29-year-old off-duty police officer called Gabriel Torres.
The other victims killed in the shooting were 52-year-old Nicole Connors, 34-year-old Mary Marshall and 49-year-old Susan Karnatz.
Marcille Lynn Gardner, 59, was wounded in the attack and remains in critical condition in hospital, while a second police officer, Casey Joseph Clark, was also injured but has been released.
Raleigh police chief Estella Patterson said those killed were a racially diverse group, and authorities have not yet determined a motive for the shooting.
