NBC News Buries Background of Latest Trans Mass Shooting Suspect – He 'Also Went by the First Name Roberta'
A week after a deadly mass shooting in Canada reignited concerns linking transgender individuals with acts of violence, another incident involving a transgender individual has taken place, but that was not the big news as the story was reported.
As noted by NBC News, two people were killed and three injured in a shooting that took place at about 2:30 p.m. Monday during a high school hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on Monday, officials said.
After summarizing the incident, noting the shooter killed himself, it took until the seventh paragraph before the key piece of information about the shooter was revealed.
“The suspect was identified by police as Robert Dorgan, who Goncalves said also went by the first name Roberta and by the last name Esposito,” NBC News wrote.
NOW – Robert Dorgan, who also goes by the name “Roberta Esposito,” named as the suspect in the Pawtucket, Rhode Island ice hockey shooting. pic.twitter.com/ZUQFdcrlF9
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) February 17, 2026
Pawtucket Police Department Chief Tina Goncalves said the shooting “was a targeted event. It looked like a family dispute and there was one individual that was a family friend.”
“It appears that a lone individual, the suspect, entered the arena to watch the hockey game of a family member. And unfortunately, during that time, a shooting occurred,” Goncalves said.
Hesitancy in telling the facts about trans shooters is nothing new. Last week, after transgender teen Jesse Van Rootselaar killed family members, students, and a teacher in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Reuters labeled him a female.
Police reportedly referred to the suspect as “a woman in a dress with brown hair” on Tuesday.
A report in the Daily Mail noted that the Rhode Island shooter appeared to have warned he was near the breaking point.
The outlet noted that an account presumed to belong to the shooter posted a video of a woman running on a treadmill while loading a handgun and aiming.
In a post on X, an account the Daily Mail presumed to be that of the shooter wrote, “Keep bashing us, but do not wonder why we Go BESERK.”
Just hours after the shooting, a woman who said she was Dorgan’s daughter said he “has mental health issues.”
“He shot my family, and he’s dead now,” she said.
The Daily Mail noted that Dorgan’s ex-wife, Rhonda, who was killed in the shooting, said her husband had “narcissistic and personality disorder traits.”
Dorgan appears to be only one of several prominent transgender-identifying school shooters in North America in only three years.
Audrey Hale, a female who identified as a male, killed six at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, before killing herself in March of 2023.
In August of 2025, two children were killed during a mass shooting inside the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis as students of the Annunciation Catholic School were attending a school-wide Mass to mark the opening of the academic year. Robert Westman, a transgender-identifying male who had his name legally changed to Robin, was responsible for that shooting.
A 2025 analysis of planned or successfully executed mass school shootings by The Western Journal in the aftermath of the Minneapolis incident found that roughly 40 percent of them since 2020 involved transgender-identifying suspects.
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