Police on scene at the Extra Space Storage facility where the suspected shooter at Brown University was found dead on Dec. 18. Photo: Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
The suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University that killed two people and injured nine others was found dead in Salem, New Hampshire, officials announced on Thursday night.
The 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown student was also the suspected shooter in Monday’s killing of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno Gomes Loureiro, 47, officials said late Thursday.
After officials said the suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, gained a green card for the U.S. via a diversity visa lottery, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said President Trump told her to direct officials to “immediately” suspend the program.
The suspect, whose last known address was in Miami, was found dead at a storage facility, officials said at a Thursday night briefing.
- He had with him “a satchel, with two firearms and evidence in the car that matches exactly what we see at the scene here in Providence,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha at the briefing.
- Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez told reporters he had “taken his own life.” The suspect, whom officials said came to investigators’ attention on Wednesday, is believed to have acted alone, per Perez.
A team of FBI agents arrive on the scene at the Extra Space Storage facility on Dec. 18. Photo: Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
The Brown gunman opened fire on Saturday in a building where students were taking final exams.
- Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said at the briefing that six people remained in local area hospitals.
- The suspect, whom officials initially said at the briefing was a Brown student, studied physics at the university from 2000 to 2001 until he took a leave of absence and formally withdrew two years later, Brown University president Christina Paxson told reporters.
- Most physics classes have taken place in the Barus and Holley building where the shooting occurred, according to Paxson.
What we’re watching: Officials said the motive for the mass shooting and killing of MIT professor Loureiro at his home near Boston was not immediately clear.
- However, Perez told reporters “the groundwork that started” in Providence “led us” to connect the two incidents. He did not elaborate further on this.
On Loureiro’s shooting, Ted Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston field office, told reporters it is believed that the suspect and the professor of nuclear science and engineering “attended the same university in Portugal.”
- Loureiro was taken to a hospital Monday evening with gunshot wounds and died on Tuesday morning.
Background: The FBI offered an award of up to $50,000 “for information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction” of a suspect on Monday, and released new photos of him.
- Investigators previously detained a man they said was a “person of interest” in the Brown shooting, but released him on Sunday after ruling him out of the investigation.
- The delay in finding the suspect had students, faculty, and members of the community on edge for days, and escalated criticism of Trump’s inexperienced FBI director Kash Patel.
Of note: The two victims of the mass shooting, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, have an on-campus memorial that continues to grow as students stop by to pay their respects before departing for the winter holidays.
- Cook was a sophomore from Alabama and Umurzokov was an Uzbek American from Virginia in his freshman year.
- Both were in a review session for a final exam when the shooting happened, officials said.
Photographs of shooting victims MukhammadAziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook at a memorial set up by Brown University outside of the Barus and Holley building on Dec. 18. Photo: David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
(AXIOS)