Suspect Found Dead, Linked to Both Attacks
Brown University Shooter Shot MIT Prof, Then Killed Himself
Suspected Brown University shooter Neves Valente was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after killing two students and later fatally shooting an MIT nuclear science professor, authorities confirmed. Investigators say the motive remains unknown.
The intense multi-day manhunt for the gunman responsible for a deadly mass shooting at Brown University and the subsequent killing of a prominent MIT professor came to an end Thursday evening, when authorities discovered the body of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente in a rented storage unit here.
Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown graduate student, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials confirmed. Two firearms were recovered near his body, bringing closure to a case that had gripped communities in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The breakthrough followed a tip from a witness who had encountered a suspicious individual near Brown's Providence campus prior to the attack, leading investigators to surveillance footage, a rental car, and ultimately the storage facility in Salem.
Authorities confirmed he was responsible for the December 13 shooting at Brown University's Barus and Holley engineering and physics building, where he killed two students—Ella Cook, 19, vice president of Brown's College Republicans, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, a recent immigrant from Uzbekistan—and wounded nine others during a final exam review session.
Two days later, on December 15, Neves Valente fatally shot Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old acclaimed MIT professor of nuclear science and physics, at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. Loureiro, director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was described by colleagues as a brilliant scientist and devoted family man.
Investigators linked the crimes through surveillance footage, rental car records, and ballistic evidence. Neves Valente, a former Brown physics graduate student who withdrew in 2001 after briefly enrolling in 2000, had studied alongside Loureiro in Portugal in the late 1990s.
Officials emphasized that no clear motive has emerged, and early speculation tying Loureiro's killing to his identity or views lacked evidence.