FBI releases timeline of suspected Brown University shooter
The FBI released an updated timeline of the suspect’s movements ahead of the Brown University shooting.
PROVIDENCE, RI – Law enforcement is pursuing a new person of interest in the Brown University shooting that killed two, injured nine and sparked a manhunt for a man caught on video casing the area moments before the assault in an engineering building, according to multiple media outlets.
Adding to the revelations of the case are that authorities on Dec. 16 were also probing a possible connection between the Brown killings and the shooting death of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. That’s according to reporting from The Providence Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, citing law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation but who asked to remain anonymous.
CBS News, the New York Times and the Associated Press, citing unnamed sources, reported that a person of interest has been identified by New England law enforcement and is being sought.
Five days after the perpetrator of a mass shooting at Brown University escaped amid chaos, law enforcement officials and experts said the investigation is progressing and the escaped killer will have a hard time evading justice.
Just a day earlier, officials said they faced a difficult investigation and had little information about the shooter.
“He could be anywhere,” Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez said in a Dec. 17 news conference. “We don’t know where the person is or who he is.”
But law enforcement experts say it’s unlikely the killer can stay off the radar forever. Widespread surveillance methods, improving technology and the likelihood that somebody will recognize him all make it likely he will be caught eventually, experts told USA TODAY.
“It’s always possible for someone to slip away,” said Dan Linskey, former chief of the Boston Police Department. “And, it’s likely that they will find him through these methods.”
How did the Brown shooting suspect escape?
It’s not unprecedented for a shooting suspect to evade capture in the immediate aftermath of a shooting, experts said. Take as examples the suspect in the killing of Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson, who allegedly jumped off a rooftop and ran away in a wooded area after the attack at Valley University in September; or Luigi Mangione, accused of shooting a health care CEO and then fleeing on foot and on a bike.
“They have the advantage of chaos in their favor,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired New York Police Officer sergeant, Supervisor Detective Squad, and adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In the Brown case, “the police are driving right by,” Giacalone said.
There were no clear surveillance images of the killer going in or out of the building where the shooting took place, the Barus and Holley building. The building is equipped with some cameras, but the shooting took place in an “older” portion of the building that has “few, if any” security cameras, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha has said.
Video footage from the incident shows only “chaos,” and not a shot of the suspect leaving the scene or inside the building, he said.
“You have a situation brewing where the person at the time of the event is as close to your crime scene as possible, and now here we are days later, and they’re saying he could be anywhere,” Giacalone said.
The lack of security footage of the shooter on campus has drawn criticism from the campus community and even President Donald Trump. But Linskey said the absence of cameras in the building is “not a failure.”
“Most likely the person was still going to be masked up, and still we would have not been able to have focused on their face, and we’d be in a similar place that we are now,” said Linskey, now a managing director at financial and risk advisory solutions provider Kroll.
Investigators still have tools to track down the killer
Without footage from the crime scene, investigators can still work with the footage they can gather from the community, where businesses and residents have their own cameras. Linskey said police are likely combing through that footage to track the shooter’s movements in the days before and after the attack. That could lead them to wherever the suspect is hiding or uncover a clearer picture of their face captured on surveillance footage.
Surveillance footage can help investigators identify a potential suspect based on a tip from the public or through the use of artificial intelligence and facial recognition software, Linskey said. Once they have a name, police can use investigative tools like geofence warrants to determine if that person left a digital footprint near the crime scene.
Authorities also announced they recovered DNA from the crime scene, which Linskey said they can run against criminal databases and even commercial databases where people upload their DNA to find out about their heritage.
Giacalone calls the three biggest tools used in manhunts the “three forensic horsemen”: cell phone records, internet records and surveillance. Investigators can use available footage to see the suspect’s movements in as many places as possible, and check cell phone records through cell towers to find out who was there at that time.
“The individual was dressed as they were, their efforts to disguise themselves with the hat and the mask, that’s been effective for him so far,” Linskey said. “But at some point hopefully they get a piece of data that identifies that face or allows people to identify the face.”
Someone who knows the perpetrator can also recognize and turn them in, Giacalone said.
“He has a specific gait… anybody who knows him and saw that walk would be able to identify him,” he said.
Can a shooter really just disappear? How long will the search take?
It’s technically possible for someone to stay on the run and slip away altogether, Linskey said, that’s not likely in this case. The widespread use of surveillance cameras, including traffic cameras and home surveillance cameras, and the advancement of technology that can assist investigators in scanning footage and locating additional images of the suspect make it much harder for a shooter to vanish completely. It would take a very skilled perpetrator and lots of planning to evade law enforcement forever, said Linskey, who served as incident commander during the manhunt for the perpetrators of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
Giacalone said he expects investigators will have nabbed the suspect within the next week, if not sooner. But until then, the killer still poses a danger, he said. It’s not a case that will ever be “over,” Giacalone said, adding that investigators will keep pursuing the suspect for as long as it takes.
While the public rightfully wants someone to be held accountable for the shooting as soon as possible, manhunts like this can take time, Linskey said.
He pointed out that it took police days to track down Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Meanwhile, he noted the FBI searched for years before arresting a suspect accused of planting pipe bombs in Washington, D.C., ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 mob at the U.S. Capitol.
“It all depends on the information, cooperation and sometimes, quite frankly, luck,” said Linskey.
