Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez details key parts of the investigation into the suspect Brown University shooter
Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez details key parts of the investigation into the suspect Brown University shooter
The shooter in the deadly Brown University shooting on Dec. 13 was a former Brown student with a last known address of Miami, Florida, said Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez.
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, died by suicide and was found in New Hampshire.
Neves Valente born in Torres Novas, Santarem, Portugal and was a legal permanent resident of the United States, Neronha’s press release said. He arrived in the United States in August 2000 as an F-1 student at Brown University and subsequently obtained U.S. lawful permanent residency in April 2017.
As far as investigators know, Neves Valente did not have any criminal record in the United States.
He studied at Brown University 25 years ago
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said that Neves Valente was enrolled in a doctoral program at Brown but subsequently withdrew from the university. Brown University President Christina Paxson said that he was enrolled from fall 2000 to spring 2001 and took a leave of absence in April 2001, and formally left the university in July 2003. He has no active affiliation with brown.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said that the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, spent a “great deal of time” at the Barus & Holley building, where the mass shooting took place.
Valente was enrolled only in physics classes when he was at Brown, and Paxson said that the majority of physics classes at Brown have always been held within the Barus & Holley building.
According to the arrest affidavit, Neves Valente lived at 122 Governor St. when he attended Brown and lived in Providence.
Did the shooter have any connection to the people he killed?
According to Paxson, he had no active affiliation with Brown.
United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Leah B. Foley confirmed Dec. 18 that Neves Valente is also believed to be responsible for the murder of an MIT professor Nuno Loureiro in Brookline, Massachusetts.
How long was Claudio Neves Valente planning the attacks?
A custodian at Brown had noticed Claudio Manuel Neves Valente and found him suspicious before the shooting, the Rhode Island Attorney General’s affidavit says.
The custodian recalled seeing a suspicious person with a surgical mask, wearing the same clothing shown in released images of the suspect, and walking with a limp twice, on Nov. 28 and Dec. 1.
According to the affidavit, the custodian said that the suspicious person had entered the Barus & Holley building on the Hope Street side on one occasion and immediately entered a ground-level bathroom across from Room 166.
Surveillance footage from Brown’s cameras showed an individual matching that description on Dec. 1, according to the affidavit.
A Brown faculty member also reached out to the Rhode Island State Police and described an encounter before the shooting. She said that she was driving east on Waterman Street on the morning of Thursday, Dec. 11, and ended up behind a grey sedan with a Florida license plate that was driving unusually slowly in the direction of Thayer Street. The faculty member recalled that the sedan “was moving so slowly that it almost came to a complete stop,” the affidavit says.
That observation helped lead to a license plate number, which the affidavit says was caught 14 different times on Flock license plate reading cameras, the first of which was on Dec. 1.
Was the Brown University shooter planning more attacks?
Perez said that as far as police know, Neves-Valente was not planning any future attacks, beyond his killing of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was gunned down Dec. 15 at his home in Brookline.
How Claudio Manuel Neves Valente hid his movements
United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said that Neves Valente returned to New England in November, but it’s unclear what he was doing since he left Brown, since his identity was only determined in the last 24 hours.
Foley said that investigators believe that Neves Valente was using a Google phone with an application that officers couldn’t ping in real time, and possibly using European SIM cards that are carried through a cell phone provider in the United States that does not provide real-time information.
It’s unclear where he got the unregistered Maine license plate, which has not been active for over a decade, Foley said.
What about his satchel?
Attorney General Peter Neronha said that Neves Valente was found with “a satchel” and two firearms on his body, plus evidence in the car “that matches exactly what we see at the scene here in Providence.”
Investigators are still trying to determine what was in the satchel, Foley said.
