02/16/26 09:53:00
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02/16 21:48 CST Shooting at Rhode Island youth hockey game leaves 3 dead,
including shooter, and 3 more wounded
Shooting at Rhode Island youth hockey game leaves 3 dead, including shooter,
and 3 more wounded
By KIMBERLEE KRUESI
Associated Press
PAWTUCKET, R.I. (AP) --- 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.
___
This story has been corrected to show that the shooting occurred on Monday, not
Tuesday.
___
Associated Press writer Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this
report.
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