Authorities have confirmed that Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the primary suspect in the deadly mass shooting at Brown University and the subsequent murder of an MIT professor, has been found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The five-day search for the gunman who terrorized the Brown University campus ended Thursday evening (18 December) when police discovered his body in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire. Authorities identified him as 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a former Brown graduate student and Portuguese national, who they say acted alone in a string of violent attacks that left three people dead across two states.
The breakthrough came after investigators linked Valente to a rental car, a gray Nissan Sentra with Florida plates, seen near the crime scenes. Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez confirmed Valente was found inside a storage unit he’d rented, alongside a satchel and two firearms. Evidence found in the vehicle “matches exactly” what was recovered from the Brown campus.
The investigation revealed a broader trail of violence. Besides the Saturday (13 December) attack at Brown, Valente is now the sole suspect in Monday’s killing of Nuno FG Loureiro, a renowned physics professor at MIT. Federal prosecutors noted that Valente and Loureiro were academic colleagues at a university in Portugal in the late 1990s, suggesting a possible, though not yet confirmed, personal motive.
The shooting at Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering building, which happened during a final exam review session, killed two students: Ella Cook, 19, a sophomore from Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, an Uzbek-American freshman. Nine other students were wounded.
“We are 100 per cent confident that this is our target and that this case is closed from a perspective of pursuing people involved,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. But he admitted, “I don’t think we have any idea why now or why? Why Brown?”
“He was sophisticated in hiding his tracks,” said Leah Foley, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, noting that the suspect had even covered his rental car’s license plate with a Maine plate to avoid detection.
Valente was a PhD student in physics at Brown from 2000 to 2001 before taking a leave of absence and formally withdrawing in 2003. He had no recent connection to the university. The investigation’s progress was reportedly helped by a tip from a witness who posted what they saw on Reddit, which led detectives to the car rental agency where Valente’s identity was finally confirmed.
The case had some early frustration. Police briefly detained a person of interest on Sunday only to release him 24 hours later, admitting the evidence “pointed in a different direction.”
While the immediate threat has passed, the motive remains under investigation as federal and local agencies piece together Valente’s life in the decades since he left Brown. The university is still in mourning, with final exams for the semester cancelled and a vigil planned to honor the victims.
Also Read / Brown University shooting: ‘Person of interest’ released as manhunt resumes.
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