James Godfrey Henry, a male in his early 30s was shot and killed on May 29, 1972, during the North Hills Mall sniper attack in Raleigh, North Carolina. He had driven to the mall with his family so he could buy a slide rule for work; he was employed as a mechanic at Whittaker Knitting Mills and had recently moved with his family to nearby Cary. He was struck in the chest in the mall parking lot and was pronounced dead on arrival at Rex Hospital.
His daughter Terri Sue and stepdaughter Carol Lynn Sutton were also shot and hospitalized. The available sources do not report the victim’s ethnicity.
The shooting unfolded just after midday on Memorial Day when a gunman opened fire from between parked cars at the front entrance of North Hills Mall. Witness accounts and contemporary reporting describe rapid, methodical fire into the crowd of shoppers and people near the entrance. In addition to the male victim James Henry, other fatally wounded victims that day included Jacquelyn “Jackie” Wharton and Melvin DeRee Harrison Jr.; a fourth victim, Jessie Burford West, died days later from his injuries. Contemporary tallies noted 3 deaths that day with a fourth death following, and seven to eight additional wounded victims.
The identified gunman was Harvey Glenn McLeod, a 22–23-year-old Raleigh resident who had purchased a. 22-caliber semi-automatic rifle earlier that day. He fired on shoppers for several minutes, then turned the weapon on himself as police converged, dying by suicide at the scene. Coverage at the time characterized the attack as random; although U.S. Senator B. Everett Jordan was campaigning at the mall, Raleigh’s police chief said he did not believe the senator was the intended target. The gunman’s ethnicity was reported as Black; the victim James Henry’s ethnicity was not reported in the sources consulted.
Because the shooter died at the scene, there were no arrests in connection with the killing of the male victim James Henry, and no additional suspects were publicly identified. The incident is consistently described in contemporaneous and retrospective accounts as a lone-actor shooting with no accomplices.
Notes on biographical details: one memorial listing records the victim as “James Godfrey Henry, age 31,” while a detailed narrative drawn from period reporting lists him as “James G. Henry, 30.” Regardless of the precise number, all sources agree the victim was a male in his early 30s; none of the sources consulted report his ethnicity.
