In the 72 hours since a shooter opened fire inside a Brown University building on Dec. 13, the manhunt for the killer has been the subject of public criticism and bafflement. Why isn’t the city more proactively searching? How come the only visual of the suspect is a blurry video when the campus is blanketed in surveillance cameras? Not knowing who fired on a group of innocent people — and why — prompted the public to investigate, speculate, and question civic leaders.
As it turns out, Providence chief of police Col. Oscar Perez said at a press conference on Thursday, “good old-fashioned policing” led to the suspect, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown student named Claudio Neves Valente, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a storage facility in New Hampshire.
Information received via a tip found on Reddit along with the observations of a local custodian led to “[blowing] this case right open,” added Attorney General Peter Neronha. “That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photographs of that individual renting the car, which matched the clothing of our shooter here in Providence. That matched the satchel that he was found dead with.” The AG also shared details of two firearms found in Valente’s car.
Officials also believe he is connected to the killing of M.I.T. professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, who was shot in his home in Massachusetts earlier this week. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said Neves Valente attended the same academic program in Portugal as Loureiro, who hailed from Portugal as well.
The search for the killer led participating law enforcement agencies — including the FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals, IRS, Secret Service, and NCIS — to Salem, New Hampshire where the suspect was found dead in a storage unit facility registered to his name.
“That’s how these cases sometimes go. You can feel like you’re not making a lot of progress; like you’re chasing leads and they don’t work out, but the team keeps going,” Neronha said.
The “whys” of it all are still “unknown to us,” he added.
An affidavit released by the Providence Police Department contained several more details of Valente’s years in the U.S., including his short time at Brown, where he studied in a graduate program for physics from September 2000 to May 2001. Previous addresses for Valente included residences in Miami and in Boston.
As previously reported, on Saturday, Dec. 13, authorities began to search for a shooter who killed at least two students and injured nine others at Brown University. On Sunday, a person of interest was taken into custody in connection with the shooting. That person was later released, Providence police said.
On Monday, Providence police circulated a new video of a “person of interest” dressed in black walking down a street. As their investigation continued, officers began going door-to-door in search of video footage from residents and businesses in the area.
The shooting on Saturday began at the prestigious Providence, Rhode Island university at around 4 p.m., inside a classroom in the university’s Barus and Holley engineering and physics building. It took place during one of the busiest times as the school is in the midst of final exams.
A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the gunman fired more than 40 rounds from a 9 mm handgun, and that two handguns were recovered when the person of interest was taken into custody.
As of early Sunday evening, one of the nine wounded students has been released from the hospital, University President Christina Paxson said during a news conference. Six others are in critical but stable condition, one is in critical condition, and one is in stable condition, a hospital spokesperson told The Washington Post.
On Sunday night, members of the community gathered for a candlelight vigil at Lippitt Memorial Park to honor the victims of Saturday’s mass shooting. The event was supposed to be a holiday celebration featuring a Christmas tree and menorah lighting, but instead served as a place to grieve and show support for one another in the wake of the tragedy.
“For those who know at least a bit of the Hanukkah story, it is quite clear that if we can come together as a community to shine a little bit of light tonight, there’s nothing better that we can be doing,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said speaking of the evening’s planned gathering at a news conference earlier in the day.
