Five people have been killed, including an off-duty police officer, after a teenage gunman opened fire in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Thursday night. 

The suspect, who police identified as a young white man, has been taken into custody. 

Raleigh Police Lt. Jason Borneo said an injured cop had been released from the hospital and a second person remained in critical condition. 

“When we lose one of our own, it is a tragic, heartbreaking day for all of us,” Mr Borneo said.

The shooting is the deadliest shooting seen by North Carolina this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive data. 

In 2009, a gunman opened fire at a nursing home in Carthage, N.C., killing seven elderly patients and a nurse and injuring several other people, including a police officer.

Similar shooting attacks left ten people dead at a supermarket in Buffalo in May; also in May was the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers, and another shooting at a Fourth of July celebration in Highland Park, Ill., that left seven dead.

Mass shootings across the United States have remained commonplace as President Joe Biden’s administration tries to clamp down on gun control. 

In June, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to see gun control measures put in place at the state level. The Bipartisan Gun Safety Bill passed by a vote of 65-33. 

The law would mandate states to pass red flag laws and set up background checks for 18- to 21-year-olds, among other measures.

The bill also includes increased funding for mental health and school safety. It will tighten a federal ban on domestic abusers buying firearms and reinforce laws against straw purchasing and trafficking of guns.

Mr Biden also signed the first federal gun reform law after a series of gun violence crimes claimed multiple lives in recent months.