How this Wake County group is helping South Asian survivors of domestic violence
By: Lexi Solomon from the Raleigh News & Observer
Nabaruna Karmakar was 33 years old when two shotgun blasts ended her life on a rainy April night in her quiet suburb. Minutes after getting a brief 911 call reporting a “double suicide” on April 14, 2023, police rushed to the Morrisville home that Karmakar, an N.C. State alumna and senior operations research specialist at SAS, shared with her husband, Michael Aaron Matthews.
First responders found Karmakar lying on a dog bed, next to a 12-gauge shotgun and an urn containing the ashes of the recently deceased dog, Boomer, that she adored, according to a civil suit filed by her sister.
Matthews, 41, was arrested that night on a charge of murder and is awaiting trial, tentatively set for May. The civil suit alleges he tried to stage the suicide of his wife of four years, writing “a note as if it was from Nabaruna Karmakar purporting to state the reasons she had allegedly committed suicide,” the complaint states.
Karmakar was the first of three known victims of homicides tied to domestic violence in 2023 in Wake County, according to the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Statewide, North Carolina saw at least 73 domestic-violence homicides in 2023, with 2024 on track to surpass that number — as of Oct. 23, the coalition knew of at least 73 homicides, including two in Wake County.
In Wake County, one organization works to reduce that number by focusing on those like Karmakar: members of the Triangle’s South Asian community.