PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The intense hunt for the suspect in the recent mass shooting at Brown University concluded dramatically at a New Hampshire storage facility. Authorities discovered the suspect deceased, subsequently linking him to the murder of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
The suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, aged 48, a former student at Brown and a Portuguese national, was found dead on Thursday night from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, as confirmed by Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez.
Investigators suspect Valente of the fatal shooting of two students and injuring nine others in a Brown University lecture hall last Saturday. Additionally, he is believed to have murdered MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro two days later in Loureiro’s suburban Boston home, about 50 miles from Providence. According to Chief Perez, evidence suggests that Valente acted alone.
Brown University President Christina Paxson clarified that Valente had been a graduate student in physics at the university from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.
“He has no current affiliation with the university,” Paxson stated.
U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley revealed that Valente and Loureiro were part of the same academic program at a university in Portugal from 1995 to 2000. Loureiro completed his studies in physics at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s leading engineering institution, in 2000, as noted on his MIT faculty page. That same year, Valente was dismissed from a position at the Lisbon university, according to a termination notice archived from February 2000 by the then-president of the school.
Neves Valente had come to Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017, Foley said. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
After officials revealed the suspect’s identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to stay in the United States.
There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.
Tip helps investigators connect the dots
The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.
Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente for providing a crucial tip that led authorities to him.
After police shared security video of a person of interest, the witness — known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit — recognized him and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.
John said he had encountered Neves Valente hours earlier in the bathroom of the engineering building where the shooting occurred and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. He again bumped into Neves Valente a couple blocks away and saw him suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.
“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.
His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.
After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente stuck a Maine license plate over his rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.
Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s in a Boston suburb. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility where he was found dead, Foley said. He had with him a satchel and two firearms, Neronha said.
Victims include renowned physicist, political organizer and aspiring doctor
Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, had joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest laboratories. The scientist from Viseu, Portugal, had been working to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.
The two Brown students killed during a study session for final exams were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov. Cook was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.
As for the wounded, three had been discharged and six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said.
Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.
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Associated Press reporters Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Matt O’Brien in Providence contributed.
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