The shooting at a Rhode Island hockey game on Monday was carried out by a transgender-identifying individual whose social media footprint contained bizarre, oftentimes extremist, content, reports indicate.
Robert Dorgan — who often went by the names Roberta Esposito or Roberta Dorgano — killed two before turning the gun on himself at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket. The U.K. Daily Mail reported that authorities said the shooting stemmed from a “family dispute.”
Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves confirmed that the shooter went by the name “Roberta” at a news conference late on Monday night.
This is Robert Dorgan, the Pawtucket sh**ter suspect. pic.twitter.com/e2g3Y7zwjE
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) February 17, 2026
Dozens of shots were fired and at least three were in critical condition at a local hospital.
A woman outside the hockey rink, who identified herself as Dorgan’s daughter without providing her identity, said that he was the shooter and had targeted his family.
“My father was the shooter,” she said, according to WCVB-TV. “He shot my family, and he’s dead now.”
WPRI-TV obtained documents about Dorgan’s personal life that indicated his gender identity played a role in his strained relationship with his family.
“In early 2020, Dorgan went to the North Providence Police Department and reported he had recently undergone gender-reassignment surgery and that his father-in-law wanted him out of their North Providence home because of it,” WPRI reported.
“Dorgan told police that his father-in-law, who shares the same surname, threatened to ‘have him murdered by an Asian street gang if he did not move out of the residence,’ according to court documents.”
Dorgan’s former wife Rhonda subsequent filed for divorce; initially, she wrote “gender reassignment surgery, narcissistic + personality disorder traits.”
She then crossed that out and wrote “irreconcilable differences which have caused the immediate breakdown of the marriage.” That breakup was finalized in June of 2021.
There were further indications that Dorgan had serious issues, including believing his father-in-law was trying to kill him:
Also in 2020, Dorgan accused his mother of assaulting him and acting in a “violent, threatening or tumultuous manner,” according to police records. The mother was charged with simple assault and battery and disorderly conduct, and the case was also a point of contention in the dispute with his father-in-law.
An attorney for Dorgan’s mother did not immediately return a call for comment.
Dorgan told police his father-in-law “told me that if I did not drop the assault charges against my mother that further retaliation could be expected and that was another reason to have me killed.”
On a social media profile believed to belong to the shooter, Dorgan seemed to embrace similarly paranoid fantasies, particularly as it related to Jeffrey Epstein and Israel.
Thank you for the tag.
The day before killing his family and himself, the Pawtucket Hockey Game shooter, a trans groyper, was apparently fawning over Nick Fuentes videos.
Roberta Dorgano was obsessed with blaming Jewish people for pretty much everything.. pic.twitter.com/HAUcC2i6lE
— Free the World 🇺🇲🌏🦅 (@PatriotVerity) February 17, 2026
Dorgan seemed to believe the 2020 election was stolen, that the Trump White House was covering up for Epstein, and that Trump’s enemies within the Republican Party — notably Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — were onto Trump and others in his administration.
“take every last MF down,” he said in response to one Greene post about the Epstein files.
In other posts, he praised Adolf Hitler repeatedly, along with so-called “Groyper” leader Nick Fuentes and William Pierce, the neo-Nazi whose writings helped inspire Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
And in other posts, he criticized transgender-skeptical figures who didn’t affirm his sexuality — and then implied that violence is an inevitable response to such criticisms.
In response to one post by conservative actor Kevin Sorbo saying that a transgender representative was a male, Dorgan wrote, “keep bashing us. but do not wonder why we Go BERSERK.” In response to InfoWars impresario Alex Jones calling transgenderism “creepy,” Dorgan wrote, “dont be so butt hurtt over somebody different. then wonder why trans ppl go f** BERSERK.”
Dorgan becomes the second transgender-identifying male to commit a mass shooting in just a week. In Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, an 18-year-old ex-student killed eight innocent people at both his home and his former school before killing himself.
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