The suspect in the Dec. 13 mass shooting on the campus of Brown University was found dead by suicide on Thursday, Dec. 18 in a storage unit in Salem, N.H., authorities said.
The shooter was identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown grad student. He is also believed to be responsible for the shooting death of an MIT professor two days later in Brookline, Mass. In a series of videos that were found in the storage unit, Neves Valente confessed that he had planned the Brown attack for at least six semesters.
In another video, Neves Valente describes how the shooting did not go according to his plan. He wanted to conduct the shooting in a “regular room,” not “an auditorium,” according to the translations provided by the Justice Department.
The shooting occurred in Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering building during final exams, in a first-floor classroom during a study session. Two students were killed and nine others injured.
The victims were identified as Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov.
Cook was from Mountain Brook, Ala. and was a sophomore at Brown interested in French and Francophone studies. She was a member of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority and the vice president of the Brown University College Republicans, according to school officials.
Umurzokov, who graduated from Midlothian High School in Virginia, was only in his first semester at Brown. According to Brown University President Christina Paxson, Umurzokov planned to concentrate in biochemistry and molecular biology. A friend of Umurzokov said he was not originally enrolled in the economics study session that was targeted by Neves Valente, but had decided to accompany a friend.
Brown University canceled all remaining in-person finals. In a letter from Provost Francis Doyle, students were allowed to accept their final grades based on their work submitted prior to Dec. 13 or change their grade option to satisfactory/no credit. In courses that were assigned a take-home exam, students were given the option to complete and submit the work for a final grade.
One man is being credited for finding the gunman. “John,” who police have not publicly identified, is a Brown graduate currently homeless. Witnesses say he is often seen around the campus and surrounding neighborhoods. According to police, John had several encounters with Neves Valente before the shooting.
John posted on Reddit that he recognized him and police should look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates. The next day, Dec. 17, John approached Providence police officers and described his encounters with the suspect.
The description of the vehicle was able to aid police into using nearby cameras to capture the license. Through footage, police were able to track the car to the storage unit where Neves Valente was found dead.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley has requested that FBI Director Kash Patel give John the $50,000 reward. The FBI did not disclose whether a reward had been paid.
