Authorities said on Sunday that they believe the suspected gunman in the fatal shooting at a country club in New Hampshire on Saturday night shouted “Free Palestine” in order to “create chaos” at the scene, suggesting they do not view the case as motivated by antisemitism. 

Hunter Nadeau, a 23-year-old Nashua, N.H., resident, was apprehended and taken into custody near the Sky Meadow Country Club on Saturday. Shortly before, Robert Steven DeCesare, 59, was killed in the shooting while attending dinner at the club, located about 40 miles north of Boston, and two other adults, another restaurant patron and an employee were injured. The employee was in stable but critical condition as of Sunday, Nashua Police Chief Kevin Rourke said. 

Four other restaurant patrons were wounded as a result of the chaos as people tried to escape the shooting.

According to local reports, as a wedding was taking place at the club, gunfire rang out as guests were gathering around the dance floor for the bride and groom’s first dance, which was set to include some individuals breaking dishes, a traditional custom in Greek weddings. Attendees quickly scattered amid the realization of gunfire, with some hiding inside the event room and others running into the kitchen and the club’s restaurant, located directly next door. 

Several witnesses reported hearing the suspect shout “Free Palestine,” including Tom Bartelson, the groom’s uncle, who told WCVB that the shooter also shouted: “The children are safe.”

“It looked like a target, that he was going right for this person. I feel terrible for him,” Bartleson later told WMUR.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said that the suspect made a series of statements during the shooting, and that authorities did not currently have evidence of the attack being motivated by antisemitism or other hate-based reasons. 

“He was making a lot of different statements, and it appears to us that it’s more likely that those statements were intended to create chaos during the event and that they don’t really give us much of a sense of his motive,” Formella said at a news conference.

Formella said Nadeau had been charged with one count of second-degree murder for knowingly shooting DeCesare, whose mother told CNN her son lunged at the gunman in an attempt to stop the shooting when he was killed. While police originally believed there to be two suspects, prompting a local shelter in place order to be issued temporarily, they reversed course later Saturday after apprehending Nadeau, who is expected to face additional charges relating to the victims with non-gunshot wounds.

The state attorney general revealed that Nadeau was a former employee of the club, but had not been employed there in about a year.

The alleged gunman who opened fire on a Catholic school in Minneapolis on Wednesday, killing two children and injuring at least 17 people, most of them students at the school, used a gun that had antisemitic and anti-Israel writings across it, according to the Anti-Defamation League. 

The assailant’s gun also included praise for mass killers “across the ideological spectrum,” including white supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government actors, the ADL stated.

Two of the names that appeared on the gun were Natalie Rupnow, who killed a staff member and a student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., last December, and Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019. 

Unverified images of the alleged shooter’s gun, taken from a video posted to a YouTube account believed to be associated with the shooter, show scrawlings on the gun and related paraphernalia that say “6 million wasn’t enough,” “Burn Israel,” “Israel must fall” and “Destroy HIAS,” a reference to the Jewish refugee organization.

The gunman who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 had posted inflammatory messages on social media also targeting HIAS, writing that the organization “likes to bring in invaders that kill our people.” 

A HIAS spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Wednesday that the attack at the Annunciation Catholic Church “echoes the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, when Jews were murdered in their place of worship” and said that because of HIAS’ focus, “our organization is sadly often the subject of hateful antisemitic conspiracy theories.”

Minneapolis law enforcement identified the shooter as 23-year-old Robin Westman, NBC News reported.