The suspect in the deadly shooting at Brown University, who killed himself, was found by police through an anonymous tip about Reddit post.
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old former Brown graduate student and Portuguese national, was found dead inside a storage unit in Salem and was also believed to have killed a renowned physics professor this week near Boston.
Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez said the suspect, whose last known address was in Miami, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and acted alone, “as far as we know.”
How Reddit post helped police?
The five-day investigation got its breakthrough after investigators received an anonymous tip on December 16 about a Reddit post that suggested police look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates spotted around Brown’s campus.
With that information, along with other witness accounts and corroborating evidence, police were later able to confirm that the vehicle, a rental from a Boston-based Alamo, belonged to the suspect, according to an affidavit filed by the Providence Police Department.
"I'm being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving. It was parked in front of the little shack behind the Rhode Island Historical Society on the Cooke St side. I know because he used his key fob to open the car, approached it and then something prompted him to back away. When he backed away he relocked the car. I found that odd so when he circled the block I approached the car that is when I saw the Florida plates. He was parked in the section between the gate of the RIHS and the corner of Cooke and George St," the reddit post read.
That post’s information “blew this case wide open,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said at a late Thursday news conference.
Police said Neves Valente killed two students and wounded nine others December 13 at Brown before escaping campus.
On Dec. 15, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was killed at his home outside Boston and died the following day in the hospital.
The FBI initially said there was no known link between the cases. But investigators said Neves Valente is responsible for both instances of gun violence. Police believe he attended the same Portuguese university as Loureiro, the slain professor, between 1995 and 2000.
“Even though the suspect was found dead tonight, our work is not done.”
In a separate news conference later Thursday night, Leah Foley, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said rental car and hotel records connected Neves Valente to both shootings. The same car was also seen in the neighborhoods around the Brown campus before the shooting.
“We got ‘em,” Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston, said Thursday night in Providence. “Even though the suspect was found dead tonight, our work is not done. There are many questions that need to be answered.”
Here’s the latest on how the investigation has unfolded.
What was the break in the case?
Manhunt for Brown University shooter continues in Salem
For days, authorities faced mounting scrutiny for the lack of any major breaks in the Brown shooting case.
As each day passed with limited new information to share with the public about the shooter, police urged Providence community members to search for and share any potential images of or interactions with the gunman. Security images from the neighborhood, some blurry and some enhanced, showed a masked man in dark clothing walking near the site of the shooting at various times.
On Wednesday, police released photos of a second individual, saying the unknown person was “in proximity to the person of interest.”
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said this man, identified as “John” in the affidavit, came forward within an hour of the images being released.
John, who identified himself as the Reddit poster to police, had observed the suspect several times before the Brown shooting.
He first encountered the suspect in a ground-floor bathroom of the Barus and Holley building about two hours before shots rang out in the classroom. John described the suspect’s clothing as “inappropriate and inadequate for the weather,” the affidavit said, adding that he had locked eyes with the suspect.
A screengrab from a video released by the Providence Police shows the person of interest in connection with the December 1...The person of interest in connection with the Dec. 13 shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in a screengrab from video released by the Providence Police. Photo provided by Providence Police via Reuters
After the suspect left the building, John said he was then engaged in “a game of cat and mouse” with the man. John told police he followed the suspect to a Nissan with a Florida plate, but he didn’t go into the car and instead walked around the block. The suspect would switch directions “every time they saw each other,” the affidavit said.
The two ended up exchanging words.
“Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?” John recalled he asked the suspect, according to the affidavit.
“Why are you harassing me?” the suspect repeatedly said.
A custodian interviewed by police earlier in the week also said he encountered a suspicious person that matched the description of the suspected shooter. He recalled the dates Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, according to the affidavit. In one instance, the custodian, like John, said he observed this person in a ground-level bathroom of the building where the shooting occurred.
How did the suspect end up in New Hampshire?
After the suspect fled Rhode Island for Massachusetts, authorities believe he replaced the license plate on his rental car with a Maine plate to cover his tracks.
Foley said security footage captured Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s residence in Brookline, Massachusetts, on Dec. 15 — the same day the professor was shot. The suspect was then seen about an hour later entering the storage facility across the border in Salem, Foley added, where Neves Valente’s body was ultimately found.
Neronha said there are several lingering questions around the suspect’s motives: Why now? Why Brown? Why these students? Why this classroom?
“That is really unknown to us,” he said.
What autopsy report reveal?
The suspect died from a gunshot wound to the head in an apparent suicide, an autopsy performed by New Hampshire’s chief medical examiner on Friday found, Attorney General John M. Formella of New Hampshire said in a statement.
His body was discovered in a storage facility in Salem, N.H., late Thursday.
He appears to have died on Tuesday, the day after he shot the MIT professor, according to the autopsy. Neves Valente is accused of opening fire at Brown University, where he once attended as a physics graduate student, killing two students and injuring nine others.
Two days later, he shot and killed Nuno F.G. Loureiro, an MIT professor whom he had studied with in Portugal.