Suspect in Brown University shooting found dead, authorities announce
The man believed to be responsible for Saturday’s mass shooting at Brown University has been found dead in New Hampshire.
Authorities said Thursday night that the suspect had been identified as 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente — adding that he is also believed to have killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor at his Brookline home.
“Shortly before 9:00 tonight, the FBI swat team executed court-authorized search warrants at a storage unit facility in Salem, New Hampshire,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Ted Docks said. “This is where we located Claudio Neves Valente, the individual who we believe was responsible for the Brown shooting.”
“Tonight, our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier,” Mayor Brett Smiley said at a news conference.
Docks added that while Neves Valente was found dead, the work of investigators is not done.
“There are many questions that need to be answered. There’s a lot of evidence that needs to be processed, and most importantly, the victims and their families deserve special care and consideration,” he said.
The mass shooting at Brown University killed two students — Ella Cook and Mukhammed Aziz Umurzokov — and wounded nine other people. Authorities have been looking for the person responsible ever since.
On Monday, two days after the school shooting, 47-year-old Nuno F.G. Loureiro — a well-known nuclear science professor at MIT — was fatally shot at his home in Brookline.
U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley said Neves Valente was responsible for both shootings. She said he and Loureiro are believed to have known each other.
“Investigators identified the vehicle that he had rented in Boston and then drove to Rhode Island,” Foley said. “The vehicle was seen outside of Brown, and there was security footage that showed a person who resembled him.”
She added that financial investigations linked Neves Valente to the car and hotels he stayed at.
“There was security footage that captured him within a half-mile of the professor’s residence in Brookline,” Foley said. “And there is video footage of him entering an apartment building in the location of the professor’s apartment, and then later that evening, he is seen about an hour later entering the storage unit wearing the same clothes that he had been seen wearing right after the murder.”
Docks also said that Neves Valente is believed to have attended the same Portuguese university in Lisbon as Loureiro.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said that Neves Valente was enrolled in physics classes at the school between 2000 and 2001, and that he would have attended classes in the Barus & Holley building, where the shooting took place.
Authorities earlier said they had identified a person of interest in the shooting, according to three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.
This comes after days of intense investigation and a manhunt for a gunman who opened fire inside the Barus and Holley engineering building on the Providence, Rhode Island, campus on Saturday. Two students were killed and nine other people injured.
Another person of interest was previously taken into custody, but that person was eventually released when investigators ruled them out as a suspect.
Investigators released a series of surveillance videos and images of a person of interest, asking the public for help with the search.
The shooting has raised questions about safety and security on Brown’s campus and concerns about misinformation and AI-generated images circulated online due to the high-profile nature of the case.
Authorities later responded to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, and it’s believed to be in connection with the Brown shooting. Providence police and the FBI could be seen there, and police in Methuen, Massachusetts, said they were mobilizing resources in the area.
Aerial footage showed some responders with guns drawn and pointed toward the building.
More on the Brown University shooting
