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.
