Police confirm suspect is one of dead in incident at boys’ hockey game that injured four in Pawtucket
At least three people are dead and three more hospitalized in critical condition in a mass shooting at an indoor ice rink in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, during a high school hockey match on Monday afternoon, the police said.
The Pawtucket police chief, Tina Goncalves, told reporters at a news conference that the suspect is one of the dead.
“We’re putting all the pieces together,” Goncalves said, adding that one of the shooting victims died at the Dennis M Lynch arena and a second succumbed to their wounds later at a hospital.
The attacker appears to have died from a self-inflicted gun wound,” Goncalves said.
Goncalves also said that the shooting appeared to have been a targeted event, possibly connected to a “family dispute”, but did not provide further details. Officials are not releasing names of any of the victims yet.
The Providence Journal reported that video acquired from a service that livestreams sports events captured audio of a burst of roughly 13 shots, fired in rapid succession, and showed panicked players and spectators rushing away.
A Rhode Island high school sportswriter, Eric Rueb, shared a video clip on social media with the caption: “You cannot see anything – the noise is unmistakeable – but the reaction and chaos that follows the follows tells the story.”
The shooting took place during a boys’ hockey game with students from multiple local schools, Pawtucket’s mayor, Don Grebien, said.