Pawtucket, R.I. — Three people, including the shooter, were killed and three others were injured in a shooting Monday inside a Rhode Island hockey rink where two high school teams were playing off the ice.
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 the arena to watch a family member’s hockey game. The attacker died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, he said, adding that authorities were still investigating.
“It appears this was a targeted incident, it may have been a family dispute,” he said.
Gonçalves identified the attacker as Robert Dorgan, adding that she also went by the name Roberta Esposito and was born in 1969. Gonçalves did not provide details about the ages of those killed, although he said it appeared that both victims were adults. As of Monday night, three injured people were admitted to hospital in critical condition.
The shooting occurred in the stands of Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, a few miles from Providence.
The game between two high school teams was broadcast live. Multiple gunshots could be heard in the video, which later appeared on social media, as players and coaches ran across the ice at opposite ends of the rink. Other videos show some players hiding in nearby shops with skates.
“I was on the ice and at first I thought it was balloons,” Olin Lawrence, a goaltender on one team, told NBC affiliate WJAR in Rhode Island. “It was pop, pop, pop. And I thought it was balloons. But it just kept going and it was actually gunshots. And after the gunshots, me and my teammates ran straight to the locker room, and we just got locked in the bunker. We pressed against the door and just tried to stay safe down there.
“It was very scary. We were very nervous.”
Outside the arena, tearful families and high school hockey players in uniform could be seen embracing before boarding a bus to leave the arena. Roads around the arena were closed due to a heavy police presence before reopening on Monday afternoon.
As part of a social media post, boston bruins He said he was “deeply saddened that a place designed to celebrate hockey and bring people together has been touched by this violence.”
A statement from the Boston Bruins: pic.twitter.com/7orJgA3myz
– Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) 16 February 2026
red Sox, Patriot, celtics And Revolution All issued statements of support.
The shooting comes nearly two months after Rhode Island’s Brown University was rocked by a separate gun violence tragedy, where a gunman killed two students and wounded nine others. That shooter also fatally shot a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. Authorities later found 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a New Hampshire storage facility.
Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebian said, “Fortunately, the two incidents are not related, but it is very tragic.” “These are high school kids, they were having a show, they were playing with the fans and this is what happened.”
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
