Brown shooting, MIT professor murder suspect found dead, officials say – National

A frantic search for the suspect last weekend mass shooting at Brown University ended at a New Hampshire warehouse where authorities discovered the man dead inside and later revealed he was also suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.

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, Providence police chief.

Investigators believe he is responsible for fatally shooting two students and injuring nine others in a Brown lecture hall last Saturdaythen killing MIT Professor Nuno FG Loureiro two days later at his home in suburban Boston, nearly 50 miles from Providence. Perez said that to investigators’ knowledge, Neves Valente acted alone.

Portugal’s top diplomat said Friday the government was surprised by revelations that a Portuguese man was the main suspect in the case. mass shooting at Brown and the murder of an MIT professor who was of the same nationality. Police said they were contacted by US authorities on Thursday after Neves Valente was named.

Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel said Portugal had provided “very broad cooperation” in the matter. He said in comments to national news agency Lusa that “the investigation is far from over.”

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled there as a physics graduate student from fall 2000 to spring 2001.

“He currently has no affiliation with the university,” she said.

Neves Valente and Loureiro previously attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, said Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s first engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year, Neves Valente was fired from his position at the University of Lisbon, according to records of a dismissal notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.

Neves Valente, born in Torres Novas, Portugal, about 75 miles north of Lisbon, had come to Brown on a student visa. He finally received legal permanent resident status in September 2017, Foley said. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from school in 2001 and obtaining the visa in 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.

After authorities revealed the suspect’s identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to remain in the United States.

There are still “a lot of unknowns” about the motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this class,” he said.

The FBI previously said it knew of no connection between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.

Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente with providing crucial information that led authorities to him.

After police shared security video of person of interestthe witness — known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit — recognized him and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users urged him to notify the FBI, and John responded that he had.

John said he had encountered Neves Valente a few hours earlier in the restroom of the engineering building where the shooting occurred and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. He passed Neves Valente again a few blocks away and saw him suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.

“When you crack it, you break it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.

His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida license plates. This gave Providence police access to a network of more than 70 street cameras operated throughout the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. These cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.

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After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente stuck a Maine license plate on the plate of his rental car to help conceal his identity.

Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s in a Boston suburb. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the warehouse in Salem, New Hampshire, where he was found dead, Foley said. He had a satchel and two guns with him, Neronha said.

Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest laboratories. The scientist from Viseu, Portugal, sought to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.

In Lisbon, he is remembered as a much-loved researcher and instructor for “all the contributions he made and what he could still have given, all the unwritten equations,” said Professor Bruno Gonçalves, director of the Institute of Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion at the Instituto Superior Tecnico.

Gonçalves added: “It is difficult to imagine in what context someone would want to harm someone who works in this field. »

The two Brown students killed during a study session for final exams were Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore, and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old freshman. Cook was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans.

Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to become a doctor.

As for the injured, three were released and six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said.

Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack occurred in an older part of the engineering building that has few or no cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and exited through a door onto a residential street bordering campus, which could explain why cameras at Brown did not capture images of the person.