Brown’s shooting, the suspect in the MIT professor’s murder has been found dead, officials say – nationally
The manhunt for the suspect in the mass shooting incident at Brown University last weekend ended in a warehouse in New Hampshire where the authorities found the man dead inside and revealed that he is also suspected of killing a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and originally from Portugal, was found dead Thursday night from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Col. Oscar Perez, Providence police chief.
Investigators believe he is responsible for shooting two students and wounding nine other people in the Brown lecture hall last Saturday, then killed MIT professor Nuno FG Loureiro two days later at his home in Boston, about 80 kilometers from Providence. Perez said that as far as detectives know, Neves Valente acted alone.
Portugal’s top official said Friday the government was surprised by revelations that a Portuguese suspect is the main suspect in the Brown mass shooting and the killing of an MIT professor who was of the same nationality. Police said they were contacted by US authorities on Thursday after Neves Valente was named.
Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel said Portugal had offered “extensive cooperation” in the case. Commenting on the national news agency Lusa, he said “the investigation is far from over.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled there as an undergraduate student studying physics from fall 2000 to spring 2001.
“He is not affiliated with the university at the moment,” he said.
Neves Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, said Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley. Loureiro graduated with a degree in physics from the Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. That same year, Neves Valente was let go from his position at the university of Lisbon, according to an archive of the termination notice of the school’s president at the time in February 2000.
Neves Valente, who was born in Torres Novas, Portugal, about 75 miles north of Lisbon, had come to Brown on a student visa. He finally received permanent permanent resident status in September 2017, Foley said. It is unclear where he was between taking a leave of absence from school in 2001 and obtaining a visa in 2017. His last known location was in Miami.
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After officials revealed the suspect’s identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allows Neves Valente to stay in the United States.
“There are still a lot of unknowns” about the motive, said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this class,” he said.
A tip helps investigators connect the dots
The FBI previously said it knew of no connection between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.
Police are thanking a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente for providing an important tip that led authorities to him.
After police shared security video of the person of interest, a witness — identified only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit — saw him and posted his allegations on social networking site Reddit. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.
John said he met Neves Valente hours earlier in the bathroom of the engineering building where the shooting happened and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. He also ran into Neves Valente a few blocks away and saw him turn his back on the Nissan sedan when he saw John.
“If you rub it, you break it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” said Neronha.
His tip led investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police to access a network of more than 70 street cameras operated in the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle information.
After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente affixed a Maine license plate to the license plate of his rental car to help hide his identity.
Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering a building near Loureiro’s in the Boston area. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering Salem, New Hampshire, where he was found dead, Foley said. He was carrying a bag and two guns, said Neronha.
The victims include a renowned physicist, a political activist and an aspiring doctor
Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, joined MIT in 2016 and was appointed last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest research facilities. A scientist from Viseu, Portugal, has been working to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.
In Lisbon, he was remembered as a highly respected researcher and teacher “for all the contributions he made and what he could do, all the calculations left unwritten,” said Professor Bruno Gonçalves, head of the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion at the Instituto Superior Tecnico.
Gonçalves added, “It is difficult to imagine in what context someone would want to harm someone who works in this field.”
The two Brown students who were killed while studying for final exams were 19-year-old Ella Cook and 18-year-old MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook was active in his Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans.
Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the US from Uzbekistan when he was young, and he aspired to become a doctor.
As for the injured, three have been released and six are in stable condition on Thursday, officials said.
Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack took place in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and exited through the front door of a residential complex across the street, which may explain why Brown’s cameras didn’t capture images of the man.
