A former restaurant employee at the Oneida Casino complex shot three people, two fatally, before he was shot and killed by police Saturday night, says Brown County Sheriff Todd Delain.
Ian Simpson, 32, and Jacob Bartel, 35, died in the shooting. The third victim, Daniel Mulligan, 28, is in “serious but stable” condition at a Milwaukee hospital.
Delain identified the shooter Monday as Bruce Pofahl, a 62-year-old who had been fired earlier this year from his job at the Duck Creek Kitchen and Bar inside the casino complex’s Radisson Hotel. He had been told he could not return to the premises, and he had no interaction with his former employer on the day of the shooting, Delain said.
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Pofahl entered the restaurant with a 9mm-handgun and shot Simpson and Bartel at a waiter station, then left the building and shot Mulligan outside on the north side of the building.
Green Bay police shot and killed Pofahl there.
The Green Bay Press Gazette reported Monday afternoon that Pofahl had harassed and threatened a female employee of the restaurant, who got a restraining order against him in early March.
A Brown County sheriff’s lieutenant told The Associated Press on Saturday night the shooter was targeting a specific person at the restaurant, but when he found that person wasn’t at work he “decided to still shoot some of the victim’s friends or coworkers.”
The investigation into the police shooting is being led by the state Department of Justice in accordance with state law, which requires shootings by police to be investigated by an outside agency.
The whole incident, which happened on a busy Saturday night at the casino around hundreds of visitors and workers, “transpired in 10 minutes or less,” Delain said. About 75 police officers from multiple agencies responded.
“It’s chaotic,” Delain said. “You have people running, and people crying and people screaming.”
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In a Sunday evening press conference, officials from the Oneida Nation praised the police response and said the tribe is offering counseling to employees and community members who witnessed or were affected by the shooting.
“We treat the situation like family, like it happened to us,” said Oneida Nation vice chairman Brandon Stevens. “We want to make sure they have ample resources on site last night, and today, and as long as they need them.”
It was the second mass shooting in Wisconsin in two weeks. On April 18, a gunman killed three people at a bar near Kenosha.
On Saturday, Mulligan was flown by helicopter to the hospital after the shooting, his sister, Caitlin Mulligan, wrote on an online fundraiser page. His jaw is wired shut, she wrote, and he has a “long recovery ahead of him.”
“This all seems like a bad nightmare, and we are waiting to wake up,” Caitlin wrote.
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