Dramatic footage shows brave spectators fighting back against a transgender dad who opened fire at a Rhode Island high school hockey game, killing two family members and wounding three others before taking his own life.
The grainy video circulating online shows the shooter in a hat walking down the aisle in the stands at the Lynch Arena in Pawtucket before he starts unloading a gun — sending people scrambling for their lives, according to the clip.
Amid the chaos, some people could be seen fighting back against the gunman, later identified by police as 56-year-old Robert Dorgan, who also went by Roberta Esposito and was the father of a senior hockey player for North Providence High School.
“A lot of people were falling to the ground and getting stepped on,” Izzy Sousa, an all-state softball pitcher for the St. Raphael school who was in the stands at the time, told the Providence Journal.
She escaped the mass shooting with just some bruises.
“All I thought was that if I fell, I was going to die,” she said.
The fatal victims of Monday’s shooting include the mother of Dorgan’s hockey player son and the student athlete’s sibling, multiple sources told WPRI.
It’s unclear if his ex-wife, from whom he split in 2021 over his gender identity and other issues, is the same woman he gunned down.
The shooting happened on what was senior day for the players participating in the tournament.
A livestream meant to broadcast the games for loved ones who couldn’t attend also captured the moment Dorgan opened fire.
“When the first three shots went off, we all thought it was balloons popping from senior night decorations,” Sousa said. “As the bangs kept going off, everyone quickly realized they were gunshots, so we all jumped up and basically started a stampede to get out.”
Sousa’s pal, Ella Taylor, with whom she attended the game, recalled falling to the ground for roughly a minute, where she was “trampled by everyone else trying to get out.”
They ultimately managed to flee to a Walgreens before they were able to get back to their car, where they called their mothers and broke down crying from the horror they just witnessed.
“Right now I feel like I’m numb, if that makes sense,” Sousa said. “I’ll randomly get memories of it happening in my head and get super emotional, but it just still feels surreal.”
Olin Lawrence, a sophomore goalie from Coventry High School, told CBS Boston that he and his teammates rushed off the ice and barricaded themselves in the locker room.
“We were just trying to be safe. We were trying to see if everyone was all good and if everyone was safe. Just to get everyone on the door,” he explained. “We pressed against the door and just tried to stay safe down in there. It was very scary. We were very nervous. It was a lot of shots.”
Dorgan shot four family members, two fatally, and a family friend before he turned the gun on himself in what authorities are investigating as a “family dispute,” according to the Pawtucket Police Department.
Dorgan reportedly underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2020, according to court filings obtained by local station WPRI, and his trans identity was a source of multiple family court battles leading up to the shooting, which cops said was targeted and the result of a domestic dispute.
The shooting comes just over two months after a gunman shot up Brown University in Providence, killing two students and wounding nine others.
Pawtucket is just a few short miles north of Providence.
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