This man is known now as “the shopping cart killer”. He’s killed up to 5 women so far and he leaves their dead bodies in a shopping cart and is now considered, a serial killer.
“A white North Carolina man is facing first-degree murder charges after fatally shooting a Black motorcyclist on Monday (January 3) during a road rage attack.”
It may be splitting hairs but “thug” to me speaks of habitual criminality as associated with the streets, where victims often are either average joes in the neighborhood or people who just happened to be on hand while passing through.
There are of course high rent thugs too (in contrast to all the way down to the nitwits, and a spectrum in between) like those found in the mafia who through no credit to themselves personally have come up in a system of crime after the likes of Lucky Luciano and a few others so they may not be in the habit of proverbially befouling their own nests.
We don’t usually call white collar criminals thugs even if they’ve long careers of crime. And that one European fellow who stole an estimated $1.4 to 1.9 BILLION worth of fine art from small galleries all across the continent was neither violent nor engaged in stealing from people of average means. Just to give two non-thug examples.