PAWTUCKET, R.I. (AP) — A shooting at a Rhode Island youth hockey game left three people dead, including the shooter, and three others hospitalized Monday night in critical condition, authorities said.
Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves told reporters that someone helped quickly end 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. She said that the person who shot died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, noting that the authorities were still investigating.
“It appears that this was a targeted event, which could be a family dispute,” she said.
Goncalves identified the shooter as Robert Dorgan, who she also said was named Roberta Esposito and was born in 1969.
The police chief did not provide more details about the shooter or the victims, except to say that it appeared that the two victims who died were adults.
She said investigators were trying to piece together what happened and spoke to dozens of witnesses who were there inside Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, a few miles outside of Providence. They were also reviewing a 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 getting on a bus to leave the area.
Monday’s shooting comes nearly two months after Rhode Island was rocked by the tragedy of gun violence at Brown University, where a gunman killed two students and wounded nine others. That shooter also went on to 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,” said Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien. “These are high school kids. They were having an event, they were playing with their families watching, a fun time, and it turned into this.”
Pawtucket is located north of Providence and just below the Massachusetts state border. A town of just under 80,000, Pawtucket was until recently known as the home of Hasbro’s headquarters.
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This story has been corrected to show that the shooting happened on Monday, not Tuesday.
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Associated Press writer Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.