PAWTUCKET, R.I. — A shooting during a Rhode Island youth hockey game left three people dead, including the shooter, and three more hospitalized Monday night in critical condition, authorities said.
Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves told reporters that someone helped bring a swift end to the violent scene Monday afternoon by intervening and trying to subdue the shooter, who was at an arena to watch a family member’s hockey game. The shooter died from an apparent self-inflicted gun wound, she said, noting that authorities were still investigating.
“It appears that this was a targeted event, that it may be a family dispute,” she said.
Goncalves identified the shooter as Robert Dorgan, who she said also went by the name Roberta Esposito and was born in 1969.
The police chief did not provide further details about the shooter or the victims, except for saying it appeared that both victims who died were adults.
She said investigators were trying to piece together what happened and have spoken with scores of witnesses who were there inside Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, a few miles outside Providence. They also were reviewing video taken from the hockey game. Unverified footage circulating on social media shows players diving for cover and fans fleeing their seats after popping sounds are heard.
Outside the arena, tearful families and high school hockey players still in uniform were seen hugging before they boarded a bus to leave the area.
Monday’s shooting came nearly two months after Rhode Island was rocked by a gun violence tragedy at Brown University, where a gunman killed two students and wounded nine others. That shooter went on to also fatally shoot a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. Authorities later found Claudio Neves Valente, 48, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a New Hampshire storage facility.
“The fortunate thing is that the two incidents are not related, but it is very tragic,” Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien said. “These are high school kids. They were doing an event, they were playing with their families watching, a fun time, and it turned into this.”
Pawtucket is nestled just north of Providence and right under the Massachusetts state border. A city of just under 80,000, Pawtucket had up until recently been known as the home to Hasbro’s headquarters.
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