More than five days after two Brown University students were killed and nine others were injured in a mass shooting on the Providence, Rhode Island, campus, police found the suspected shooter dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire.
Federal officials soon confirmed that the person suspected of opening fire at Brown — 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente — was the same person suspected of shooting and killing 47-year-old MIT physics professor Nuno F. G. Loureiro at his Brookline apartment complex on Dec. 15.
Redacted court documents filed Thursday in Rhode Island paint a clear picture of how the police investigation into the shooting at Brown progressed over the last few days, as well as how investigators finally identified Neves Valente as a suspect.
Prior to the discovery of Neves Valente’s body, Providence police were set to charge him with 25 counts, including two charges of first-degree murder, according to court documents.
The day of the mass shooting
Providence police responded to Brown University’s Barus and Holley building on Hope Street at 4:06 p.m. on Dec. 13, Detective Ryan Fedo wrote in a Thursday court filing. The building is home to the university’s engineering and physics programs.
Police and firefighters found the victims in an auditorium in which an economics class final exam review had been finishing up, Fedo wrote. The two students who died — sophomore Ella Cook and first-year student Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov — were declared dead at the scene.
Students interviewed by police said they’d heard gunfire coming from the back of the auditorium, and that the shooter then walked to the front while firing, Fedo wrote. Some students hid themselves under the teacher’s desk until police arrived.
Witnesses described the suspect as a man with a medium build who wore a face mask, Fedo wrote. Police found 44 spent shell casings at the scene.
The initial evidence
Investigators recovered two different full DNA profiles from evidence collected at the scene, but neither matched any existing profiles from the FBI’s database, Fedo wrote. Security video from the area showed a suspicious person circling Brown University as early as 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 13.
Footage also showed the same person interacting with a man police refer to in the court filing as “John” at 2:16 p.m. that day, according to Fedo’s account. Investigators used the security videos to identify the suspect’s unique gait and determine that he was between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-9 inches tall.
Multiple students who were shot confirmed that the suspicious person from the security footage was the shooter, Fedo wrote. Images from the security videos were later released to the media in the hopes that the public would provide police with the suspect’s identity.
A Brown University custodian told police in an interview that he’d seen a man wearing the same clothing and face mask as the person in the security footage come into the Barus and Holley building multiple times in the last month, Fedo wrote. The custodian’s account was soon corroborated by security video from the building.
A break in the case
On Dec. 16, police received a tip referencing a comment from the Providence sub-Reddit in which the commenter claimed to have interacted with the suspicious person from the security footage on the day of the shooting, Fedo wrote. The description of the interaction matched that of the suspect and John.
The comment advised investigators to search for a gray Nissan with Florida license plates that might be a rental vehicle, Fedo wrote. They soon found a gray Nissan Sentra in security video from the scene.
Providence police interviewed John on Dec. 17, and he provided a detailed description of the suspect and the Nissan, as well as multiple interactions he had with him on the day of the shooting, Fedo wrote. At one point, the suspect ran away from John, then accused him of “harassing” him, and John noted that the suspect may have a hispanic accent.
A Brown University faculty member independently told Rhode Island State Police on Dec. 17 that she’d noticed a gray Nissan with Florida plates driving slowly around the neighborhood on Dec. 11, Fedo wrote. Security video from the area revealed that the same car had been in the area 14 different times in recent weeks, beginning on Dec. 1.
Police soon discovered that the gray Nissan was a rental from an Alamo Rent-A-Car in downtown Boston, Fedo wrote. It had last been rented by Neves Valente on Dec. 1. Video footage from the Alamo Rent-A-Car showed him wearing clothing matching that of the suspect from the Brown shooting.
Neves Valente’s connection to Loureiro
Brown University’s records indicated that Neves Valente had been a doctoral student studying physics from the fall semester of 2000 to the spring semester of 2001, Fedo wrote. He took a leave of absence the following semester before dropping out in the fall of 2003.
Neves Valente became a legal permanent resident of the U.S. in 2017, Fedo wrote. His last known address was located in Miami, Florida.
During a press conference Thursday night, Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said she believed Neves Valente and MIT Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro knew each other. Both men were from Portugal, and Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez Jr. said at a different conference earlier that night that they’d previously studied at the same university in Lisbon.
But as of Thursday night, there was no clear motive in the mass shooting at Brown University or in Loureiro’s killing, Foley said.
