Family mourns Raleigh father killed in Thelma Street shooting

Terrance Quarles was killed on Thelma Street in Raleigh, and his mother said the loss cut through a family that had already tried to outrun gun violence by moving south from Washington, D.C.

Quarles was 27 and the father of two young children, a baby who is 8 months old and a 4-year-old. His mother, Chakita Ballard, said he was her only son and youngest child, a detail that underscored how many lives were tied to the shooting beyond the crime scene itself. The family now faces funeral arrangements while also trying to care for children left without their father.

Raleigh police have charged three people in connection with Quarles’ death. The accused appeared before a Wake County judge on Tuesday, and the case was set to return to court next month. The court process is moving forward, but the family’s grief has already taken on the immediate practical burdens that follow a homicide: funeral costs, child care, and the sudden loss of income and support.

Ballard’s account carried a painful geographic irony for Wake County residents. She said the family left Washington, D.C., hoping to escape the violence there, only to lose her son to gunfire in Raleigh. That makes Quarles’ killing more than one family’s tragedy. It also reflects a broader public-safety question that keeps surfacing on streets near New Bern Avenue: what changes when a neighborhood becomes linked to another deadly shooting, and what still has to change?

Thelma Street now joins that list of places where a police response, a courtroom date, and a family’s private mourning have become part of the same public story. For Ballard, the loss is personal and permanent. For the city, the case adds another reminder that even as arrests are made and charges are filed, the aftermath of gun violence stretches far beyond the block where the shooting happened.

The family has also been raising money online to help cover funeral arrangements, as relatives and friends try to gather enough support to carry them through the days ahead.