Patrons at a restaurant acted quickly to stop a gunman who opened fire at a New Hampshire country club and likely averted a worse tragedy, authorities said Sunday. One person was killed and two others were wounded by gunfire Saturday night before a suspect was taken into custody in a nearby neighborhood not long after the shooting, reports the AP. The gunfire killed Robert DeCesare Jr., 59, at Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashua, said New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and Nashua Police Chief Kevin Rourke. They said that the suspect was Hunter Nadeau, 23, of Nashua, and that he had been arrested and charged with one count of second-degree murder for knowingly shooting DeCesare.
Nadeau was a former employee of the club, Formella said, adding that Nadeau made a number of statements during the shooting and appeared to be attempting to cause chaos in the moment as opposed to showing a hate-based motivation. Witnesses reported that Nadeau said "Free Palestine" during the confusion. Some witnesses said someone struck Nadeau with a chair in an attempt to subdue him. Formella cited "selfless acts of courage by the patrons in the restaurant who put aside care for their own safety and worked to intervene and stop the shooter."
The shooting happened adjacent to a wedding at the club. Wedding DJ Michael Homewood credited the chair strike with preventing an even worse shooting. "He hit him over the head with a chair, and he probably saved a bunch of lives just doing that," Homewood told WCVB-TV. Investigators were working to determine a motive, Formella said. "Additional charges likely will be brought, including for the additional shooting victims," Formella and Rourke said in a statement.
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Charlene DeCesare, the widow of Robert DeCesare, said in an email that she and her daughter were closest to the shooter when he walked into the room and that he appeared to target a restaurant employee. "My husband got caught in the fire trying to protect us," she said.
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