Police are investigating the death of a New Hampshire man following an incident in the stands at a New England Patriots home game over the weekend, a county attorney’s office said.
Police and personnel responded to the upper deck at Gillette Stadium shortly before 11pm local time on Sunday. Dale Mooney, 53, of Newmarket, New Hampshire, “was in apparent need of medical attention”, the Norfolk County district attorney’s office said in a news release on Monday.
Mooney was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the news release said.
Results of an autopsy were expected on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said.
Further information was not provided.
“The death of a 53-year old New Hampshire man following an incident in the 300s tier of Gillette Stadium during the September 17, 2023 game is, according to normal protocol, under investigation by Massachusetts State Police assigned to the Norfolk district attorney’s office,” the release said.
According to Joey Kilmartin of Nashua, New Hampshire, another spectator at Sunday’s game who spoke to the local news outlet MassLive.com, the incident was precipitated by ongoing bickering throughout the game between one section of the crowd and another. That back-and-forth culminated with a physical altercation near the end of the fourth quarter.
“The Dolphins fan walks over and clearly punches him in the face,” Kilmartin said. “[He] gets knocked out and you can tell right away he’s not OK.”
Mooney never got back up and EMTs arrived to perform CPR, said Kilmartin, who later gave his account to Foxborough police.
“It’s an unfortunate situation,” he said. “I feel bad for the family.”
Kilmartin shared video of the incident with WCVB-TV, an ABC affiliate in Boston, which published stills of the incident.
The Miami Dolphins defeated the Patriots in Sunday’s game.
