Brown University shooting suspect found dead, also linked to MIT killing

With help from an anonymous tipster, the suspect in Saturday’s mass shooting at Brown University has been identified and linked to the killing of an MIT professor. Suspect was found dead and investigators and news outlets are struggling to find his motives.

Nearly one week after a man entered the Brown University campus, killed two people and injured nine others, police say the suspect has been found dead in a storage facility in New Hampshire. He died two days before he was found of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to an autopsy. Authorities have also linked him to the killing of an MIT physics professor near Boston, MA, which happened two days after the Brown shooting and just over an hour away.

The suspect has been identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese immigrant. Valente was formerly a student at Brown and also attended a prestigious Portuguese institution at the same time as the deceased MIT professor, Nuno Loureiro. However, his motives for the shooting remain a mystery.

A promising student who struggled to make an impression

News outlets both in the US and Portugal have struggled to find people on whom Valente had ever made an impression. However, his early academic career suggested the makings of a promising physicist. Rogério Colaço, the President of the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, (which Valente and Loureiro attended from 1995 to 2000) said that Valente had achieved high marks. Colaço told a Portuguese outlet, “Most classmates have no memory of Cláudio Valente, other than the fact that he was the top student in the program that year”.

Valente attended Brown starting in 2000, likely taking classes in the Barus and Hollley building, where he carried out his first heinous crime on Saturday. He struggled to adjust at Brown, requesting a leave of absence in 2001 and ultimately withdraw. A man who identified himself as Valente’s only friend at Brown remembers him being intellectually and academically gifted, but awkward and at times arrogant and combative.

What if anything Valente achieved personally or professionally since leaving Brown is not currently known.

By contrast, Loureiro was professionally accomplished and beloved by his colleagues and students. The two young people killed at Brown, Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook, have also been described as engaging and kind human beings with a promising future. All three will be mourned and remembered by those who knew and loved them.

The Reddit tipster who cracked the case

A man known publicly only as “John” is credited with helping authorities identify and track down Valente. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley says that John is a Brown grad student. According to the Reddit story, John ran into Valente in a bathroom of the Barus and Holley building hours before the shooting. Finding him suspicious, John followed Valente outside. At one point, Valente confronted him, asking “why are you harassing me?”. John also followed Valente to his car, “a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental”.

Although John shared his tips on Reddit, it went unnoted until the police subsequently released an image of him, asking for him to come forward because they believed he had been “in proximity” to the suspect. John came forward and shared his information. That led police to the rental car company, where they found images of Valente renting a car.