The suspected killer of two Brown University students and an MIT college professor was at large until authorities found him dead on Thursday night in a New Hampshire storage unit.
The shooter’s pursuit, driven to a conclusion in part by a social media post, has stunned observers. The suspect also surprised police, who at first did not believe he was the same person who murdered the professor. The case is unique, and questions remain.
Here’s more about the shooter, how he was found, and the aftermath of his case.
Who is the shooter?
Police identified the alleged shooter as 48-year-old Portuguese immigrant Claudio Manuel Neves Valente. He studied physics alongside Nuno F.G. Loureiro, the killed professor, in the 1990s at the Instituto Superior Técnico and graduated at the top of his class.
He came to the United States in 2000 on a student visa to study physics as a Ph.D. student at Brown, taking a leave of absence in April 2001 and officially leaving the school in 2003. Brown President Christina H. Paxson said they could not find anyone who remembered Neves Valente, and he didn’t have any public safety interactions.
“We have thus far found no indication of any concerns pertaining to conduct or any public safety interactions during the short time Neves Valente was enrolled as a graduate student at Brown,” she said.
Neves Valente became a legal permanent resident of the U.S. in 2017, and his last known address was in a residential neighborhood north of Miami, Florida.
His motivations for shooting Loureiro on Dec. 15 or committing the shooting at Brown on Dec. 13 are unclear. After firing on students at Brown, Neves Valente traveled to the professor’s home to kill him. He evaded the police for days before being found. It’s also unclear why he killed himself in a New Hampshire storage unit.
How did police find him?
The road to finding Neves Valente was cold after he escaped the Brown shooting until a Reddit post reopened the search.
A person named “John” in affidavits wrote a social media post describing his encounter with Neves Valente and the car he was driving. He had been responding to a thread explaining the $50,000 reward for information on the suspect.
“I’m being dead serious,” he wrote. “The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental.”
“That was the car he was driving,” John said of the suspect’s Nissan. “He used his key fob to open the car, approached it and then something prompted him to back away. When he backed away he relocked the car. I found that odd so when he circled the block I approached the car and that is when I saw the Florida plates.”
He wrote that the Rhode Island State Police interviewed him after he went to them after his first post. He said he described running into the suspect at Brown and following him until the suspect asked, “Why are you harassing me?”
He said he believed the suspect’s clothes were “inappropriate and inadequate” for the Rhode Island weather.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha gave credit to John and said he “blew the case wide open.”
“That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photographs of that individual renting the car, which matched the clothing of our shooter here in Providence, that matched the satchel,” Neronha said at a news conference.
Without information about the car, which was a rental, police would not have known the shootings were connected. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley also praised John on Friday.
“He was, in fact, critical to this, and certainly everyone in Providence owes this individual a debt of gratitude,” Smiley told CNN on Friday morning.
John’s identity is unknown, but he’s reportedly a former student at Brown and is homeless.
When U.S. Attorney Leah Foley was asked about whether John would receive the $50,000 reward, she chuckled and said, “We’ll let you know.”
Aftermath
Noting that Neves Valente came to the U.S. through the diversity lottery system, the Trump administration temporarily halted the program. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the pause, which she said was directed by President Donald Trump.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” she wrote on X. She said Neves Valente “should never have been allowed in our country.”
Trump wanted to end the program during his first term, Noem said, after a person under the diversity visa program rammed into a group of people in New York City. The Department of Homeland Security later blamed the Biden administration for keeping the program.
BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING SUSPECT FOUND DEAD IN NEW HAMPSHIRE STORAGE UNIT
“Biden revived this security disaster, and now Americans are again dead because of it,” the department wrote on X.
Neves Valente’s death also means the people affected by the shootings may not get further answers on his motivations and will never see him convicted for the murders.
