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Motive remains unclear after MIT shooter Brown’s death
Retired NYPD Detective Paul Mauro joins “Fox & Friends Weekend” to discuss the unknown motive of the gunman suspected of killing two Brown University students and an MIT professor after being found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit.
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New details emerge about the suspected shooter in the killings of an MIT scientist and two Brown University students, along with a top Portuguese nuclear fusion official. an official told the Daily Mail the suspect may have fixated on the victim as a symbol of success he never achieved.
Authorities say Nuno Loureiro, 47, a world-renowned fusion energy researcher and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was shot Dec. 15 and died hours later. Police believe the shooter was Claudio Neves-Valente, 48, a former physics prodigy from Portugal who later died by suicide. after a multi-state manhunt.
The case expanded significantly after authorities identified Neves-Valente as the suspect in a mass shooting at Brown University days earlier. Police say Neves-Valente opened fire on Dec. 13 inside a campus building, killing two students and injuring nine others. Investigators later confirmed he was also responsible for the fatal shooting of Loureiro on Dec. 15 at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Neves-Valente was a Portuguese national and former Brown student who studied physics from fall 2000 to spring 2001 before withdrawing from the program in 2003, according to Brown University President Christina Paxson. She emphasized that Neves-Valente had no recent affiliation with the university at the time of the campus shooting.
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Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts released this image showing the man identified in deadly shootings at Brown University in Rhode Island and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. (Department of Justice)
According to the Daily mail, Dr. Bruno Goncalves, president of the Portuguese Institute of Plasma and Nuclear Fusion, said Neves-Valente had no known relationship with Loureiro in the decades since they studied together, emphasizing that the attack was not the result of a rivalry or ongoing dispute.
Instead, Goncalves said Neves-Valente may have focused on what Loureiro had become to represent.
“The strongest theory is that Claudio saw Nuno as a symbol of the academic and professional success he had failed to achieve,” Goncalves said.
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He emphasized that the resentment was one-sided and did not exist during their student years.
“It’s not a rivalry that existed at the time,” Goncalves said, adding that it “developed later.”
Goncalves also rejected claims that institutional pressure or university culture was responsible for the violence, telling the Daily Mail that Portugal’s elite technical universities provide psychological support and that many graduates successfully transition to other careers.
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MIT professor Nuno Loureiro was shot and killed in this Brookline building. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital)
“It wasn’t par for the course,” he said. “This is how Claudio chose to respond to the course.”
While pointing out that Neves-Valente may have struggled after leaving the university elite, Goncalves pointed out that others in similar circumstances did not resort to violence.
“It’s strange,” Goncalves said, according to the Daily Mail, “that he didn’t just try to make something of himself in another field, as many IST students do.”
Images of Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente displayed on a projector screen during a press conference in Providence, Rhode Island. The 48-year-old former student and Portuguese national was identified as the perpetrator of a mass shooting that killed two students and injured nine. (Andrea Margolis/Fox News Digital)
Law enforcement officers said Loureiro had no recent contact with Neves-Valente and described the attack as a deliberate, unilateral act of criminal violence perpetrated against a victim unrelated to his personal or professional failings.
At the time of his death, Loureiro was widely considered one of the leading figures in fusion energy research.
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MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro was shot dead in his home on Monday, December 15. (Jake Belcher)
Loureiro met Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), last year at MIT and at an international fusion summit in Rome that brought together top government officials, scientists and world energy leaders.
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He was also recently named the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on early career researchers, with recipients recognized at the White House.
Goncalves previously told Fox News Digital that Loureiro “led one of the top fusion research institutes” and was “highly known and recognized internationally for his contributions and leadership.”
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Loureiro lived in a Brookline condominium with his wife and three daughters. His mother-in-law was visiting at the time of the shooting, according to the Daily Mail. Friends and neighbors described the family as calm and close-knit, and authorities said there was no indication Loureiro anticipated a threat.
Michael Dorgan and Michael Ruiz of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
Stepheny Price covers crime including missing persons, homicides and migrant crime. Send story tips to stepheny.price@fox.com.
