That was my thinking, too, though this cretin doesn't look anything like Rye Gerhardt.
After being taunted and maced by the lady judge sitting at a table, he shoots her then the cook who comes at him with a frying pan. With the waitress looking at him and dropping her coffee pot, he wounds her as she runs out the door into the snow. She falls and he executes her to the back of the head. Just after that, he gets hit by a car driven by the butcher's wife and flies through the windshield, not to die immediately but later in their garage. Thence begins a search by the Gerhardt's to try to find and kill the husband/wife that has not yet come to a conclusion.
BTW, Rye does bear a resemblance to the small, creepy-looking perp in the original movie.
