(The Lion) — Three people are dead and three others hospitalized in critical condition after a man who identified as a woman fired shots Monday afternoon at a high school hockey match in Rhode Island.
The incident was characterized by a police report as a “family dispute.”
Robert Dorgan, 56, who used the name Roberta Esposito, is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot after shooting five others in the stands of the Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, CBS News reported.
“The suspect was confirmed as one of those casualties,” Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves said in an initial press briefing Monday afternoon. “Later on, we learned that another casualty from the shooting was at the hospital and that they succumbed to their injuries … and there [are] three additional victims at the hospital that all are in critical condition at this time. It appears that this was a targeted event, that it may be a family dispute.”
A Good Samaritan intervened and brought “a swift end of this tragic event,” Goncalves said at the Monday night press briefing. Goncalves did not specify Dorgan’s relation to the local schools, Coventry and Blackstone Valley, in the hockey match. She also did not disclose the identities of the deceased, although media reports suggest the victims were Dorgan’s own family members. Police retrieved firearms from the scene, she said.
Immediately following the shooting, someone identified as Dorgan’s daughter told the media her father shot her family and had “mental health issues,” according to Boston news outlet WCVB Channel 5.
In 2020, after his gender transition surgery, Dorgan reported to the police that his father-in-law was making threatening comments and insisted he leave the home, according to court documents Rhode Island outlet WPRI obtained.
Dorgan and his wife divorced in June of 2021, and paperwork originally cited the reason for the divorce as “gender reassignment surgery, narcissistic + personality disorder traits.” These reasons were crossed out and replaced with “irreconcilable differences which have caused the immediate breakdown of the marriage,” National Review reported.
Post Millennial Senior Editor Andy Ngo said Dorgan had “targeted” him for his reporting. Ngo reposted actor Kevin Sorbo’s Sunday X post, which stated that a Delaware representative, who goes by the name Sarah McBride, is biologically male.
“keep bashing us. but do not wonder why we Go BERSERK,” Dorgan commented on the post, just a day before the shooting.
Monday’s shooting follows another school shooting last week in Canada, where 17-year-old Jesse Strang, a male who identified as female, killed at least 10 victims and also took his own life.
This story is developing and may be updated.
