An autopsy has revealed that the suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor died by suicide two days before his body was discovered in a storage locker in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire attorney general's report estimates that Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, died on 16 December, the same day that MIT professor Nuno Loureiro succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in Massachusetts.
Three days earlier, on 13 December, Neves Valente is alleged to have carried out a shooting at Brown University's Barus & Holley engineering building, killing two students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, and injuring nine others. The two incidents were initially not linked, but investigators pieced together a timeline of Neves Valente's movements across three states, aided by a Reddit post from a homeless former Brown student named 'John' who identified him as a person of interest.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha explained that the tip led to a car, which led to a name and photographs matching the suspect's clothing. Neves Valente was found dead with a satchel containing two firearms, and evidence in the car matched the scene in Providence. The vehicle, a grey Nissan with Florida plates, was traced to a Boston car rental office, and later found outside a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, along with Neves Valente's body.
Investigators confirmed that Neves Valente had been a doctoral student at Brown and previously studied with Loureiro at Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal between 1995 and 2000. A motive has not been formally established, but a former classmate, Scott Watson, now a professor at Syracuse University, told WCVB5 that Neves Valente was 'bored' and 'hated' his time at Brown, complaining that classes were too easy.
Portugal's foreign minister, Paulo Rangel, expressed shock at the revelations and confirmed that Portugal has provided 'very broad cooperation' in the investigation. In the wake of the killings, the Trump administration ordered the suspension of the green card lottery programme, claiming Neves Valente had used it to enter the US in 2000. However, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez stated that Valente entered on a student visa and became a permanent resident in 2017.
