A man suspected in the fatal shootings at Brown University and of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a five-day search that spanned several New England states, authorities said Thursday. Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone, the AP reports. Investigators believe he is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days later at his Brookline home, nearly 50 miles away, US attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said.
Two students were killed and nine were wounded in the shooting Saturday in a Brown University lecture hall. The investigation shifted Thursday when authorities said they were looking into a connection between the Brown attack and the fatal shooting of 47-year-old MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro. The suspect has links to both: Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000. "He has no current affiliation with the university," she said. Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said.
Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal's premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school's then-president in February 2000. Neves Valente had studied at Brown on an F1 visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent resident status in September 2017, Foley said. His last known residence was in Miami. There are still "a lot of unknowns" in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. "We don't know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom," he said.
Police credited a Brown University custodian who had several encounters with Neves Valente as providing the crucial tip that led to the shooting suspect. "When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name," Neronha said. After police shared images of a person of interest, the janitor recognized him and posted his suspicions on social media forum Reddit, where he was a regular commenter. Other Reddit users urged him tell the FBI, and the witness said he did. But it took days before police say they interviewed him after publicizing a video where Neves Valente appeared to run away from the other man. His tip gave investigators a key detail: a Nissan sedan with Florida plates.
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