Officials in Massachusetts are investigating after a 53-year-old fan who attended Sunday night’s game between the New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins died after an altercation broke out in the stands.
Dale Mooney was rushed to Sturdy Memorial Hospital after the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said he appeared to be in “need of medical attention” after an incident in the 300s tier of Gillette Stadium. Witnesses have described a fight breaking out before the man’s death.
“It was really one punch that I saw and the victim got punched really hard on the side of the head, and went down. He’s a bigger guy but he just crumbled,” one witness said.
Today, Mooney is being remembered as a man who once jumped into action to help save the life of a young girl on a New Hampshire beach years earlier. Mooney put his own life at risk in July 2009 when he spotted the child caught between the rocks near a jetty on Hampton Beach and rushed to save her, according to a local news report at the time.
“The waves were slamming over her and she couldn’t even stay on her feet,” Mooney told Seacoastonline of the near-tragedy.
“She kept falling in between the rocks, trying to keep her head above water.”
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The girl was trying to retrieve her boogie board but then she got stuck among the jagged rocks as the tide rose and wind gusts hit 30 mph, according to the outlet.
Mooney, who was just 39 at the time, made his way toward the girl but things got crazy for him as well.
“We were both pretty scared at that point,” he said.
“Once I made eye contact with her, I couldn’t turn back. As the two or three big waves came up, I told her, ‘Hold your breath, hold your breath.’ And then boom, the wave would hit us,” Mooney said.
“Then we’d fight to stand up and she tried to stand up. She was slipping and sliding.”
Mooney soon told the young girl to jump onto his shoulders during a short break between the crashing waves.
“We went for it and got hit by the next two or three rounds trying to get back,” he said.
Mooney was eventually able to make it back to shore with the young girl.
“I had a few people come up to me as I came out to tell me, ‘That was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen’ and whatnot. So I felt pretty good about it,” he said.
He was never able to get the young girl’s name as she thanked him and ran off to rejoin her family.
14 years later, Mooney would be part of a tragedy that saw him lose his life in the most senseless way when he reportedly got sucker punched by a Miami Dolphins fan.
“The Dolphins fan walks over and clearly punches him in the face,” Joey Kilmartin of Nashua, New Hampshire, told the local outlet.
“[He] gets knocked out and you can tell right away he’s not OK.”
Mooney never regained consciousness and now his family is left heartbroken.
