PAWTUCKET, R.I. — Authorities claimed that a shooting at a youth hockey game in Rhode Island killed three people, including the shooter, and sent three more to the hospital in critical condition on Monday night.
Tina Goncalves, the chief of police in Pawtucket, told reporters that someone helped bring an end to the violent scene quickly on Monday afternoon by stepping in and trying to subdue the shooter, who was at an arena to watch a family member's hockey game. She stated that the shooter died from what looked like a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but that the police were still looking into it.
"It looks like this was a planned event, maybe a family fight," she said.
Goncalves added that the gunman was Robert Dorgan, who she said was also known as Roberta Esposito and was born in 1969.
The police chief didn't offer much more about the gunman or the victims, other than that it looked like both of the people who killed were adults.
She stated that investigators were trying to figure out what happened and had talked to a lot of people who were at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, which is a few miles outside of Providence. They were also looking at video from the hockey game. Unverified videos going around on social media show players jumping for cover and fans running away from their seats when they hear popping sounds.
Before getting on a bus to leave the area, families with tears in their eyes and high school hockey players still in uniform were spotted cuddling outside the arena.
The shooting on Monday happened about two months after a shooter killed two students and hurt nine others at Brown University in Rhode Island. That shooter also killed a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later, police found 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente dead from a gunshot wound he had given himself in a storage facility in New Hampshire.
Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien remarked, "The good news is that the two events are not connected, but it is very sad." "These kids are in high school." They were having a good time at an event where they played with their family watching. Then something happened.
Pawtucket is located immediately north of Providence and right below the border with Massachusetts. Pawtucket, which has just under 80,000 people, was known until recently as the site of Hasbro's headquarters.
