3 Dead in Shooting at Rhode Island Youth Hockey Game
Three people, including the suspect, were fatally shot at a Rhode Island youth hockey game on Monday, authorities said.
The other three victims were in critical condition and hospitalized, Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves told reporters. He said the attacker died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Although police were not involved in the attacker’s death, authorities said they were continuing to investigate.
“It appears this was a targeted incident, a domestic dispute that may have occurred,” he said.
While Goncalves did not provide detailed information about the ages of the suspects or those killed, he said it was understood that both victims were adults.
Investigators are trying to talk to witnesses of the shooting at Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, a few miles outside Providence, and try to piece together the incident, he said. They were also reviewing videos from the hockey game. Unverified footage circulating on social media showed players diving for cover and fans running from their seats after explosions were heard.
Outside the arena, tearful families and high school hockey players still in uniform were seen embracing before boarding buses to leave the area. The roads surrounding the arena were closed due to a heavy police presence and helicopters flying overhead.
Monday’s shooting comes nearly two months after Rhode Island was rocked by a separate gun violence tragedy at Brown University; A gunman killed two students and injured nine others. The attacker then fatally shot a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Authorities later found 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a storage facility in New Hampshire.
“The fortunate thing is that the two events are not related, but it is very tragic,” Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien said. “These are high school students. They were doing an activity, playing with their families, watching, having a fun time, and it turned into this.”
Pawtucket is located just north of Providence and just below the Massachusetts state line. Pawtucket, with a population of just under 80,000, was until recently known as the home of Hasbro’s headquarters.
