A suspect who allegedly opened fire at a Nashua, N.H., country club on Saturday shouted “free Palestine” while carrying out the shooting, that killed one and wounded two, according to an eyewitness report.
A witness told the local ABC affiliate WMUR that the shooter appeared to target his victim as he fired several shots in the restaurant of the Sky Meadow Country Club, which was also hosting a wedding at the time.
Tom Bartelson, who was at the country club to attend his nephew’s wedding ceremony on Saturday, told the outlet that he heard the suspect shout “the children are safe” and “Free Palestine.”
Authorities identified the suspect as Hunter Nadeau, 23, and said he had been arrested and charged with one count of second-degree murder for knowingly shooting the victim, identified as Robert Steven DeCesare.
“Additional charges likely will be brought, including for the additional shooting victims,” stated New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and Nashua Police Chief Kevin Rourke on Sunday.
“There is no known connection between Hunter Nadeau and Mr. DeCesare,” according to the statement by the New Hampshire Department of Justice.
Leo Terrell, who leads the Trump administration’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, said in a response to the shooting that “Free Palestine is a violent virus attempting to take over our country!
“How many more times does this need to happen before the world wakes up?” he tweeted.
Robin Westman, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot last month after killing two children at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minn., wrote of murdering “filthy Zionist Jews” to “free Palestine.”
The New York Post said that it translated writings by the shooter, 32, in the Cyrillic alphabet. “If I will carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews,” the shooter reportedly wrote in a journal that the paper said was “full of antisemitic slurs.”
On May 21, suspected gunman Elias Rodriguez, 30, allegedly shouted “free Palestine” after shooting two employees of the Israeli Embassy outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.
