Man suspected in Brown University shooting and MIT professor’s killing
is found dead, officials say
[December 19, 2025]
By KIMBERLEE KRUESI, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, ERIC TUCKER and
HANNAH SCHOENBAUM
A frantic search for the suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at
Brown University ended at a New Hampshire storage facility where
authorities discovered the man dead inside and then revealed he also was
suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese
national, was found dead Thursday night from a self-inflicted gunshot
wound, said Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief.
Investigators believe he is responsible for fatally shooting two
students and wounding nine other people in a Brown lecture hall last
Saturday, then killing MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro two days later
at his home in the Boston suburbs, nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) from
Providence. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted
alone.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was
enrolled there as a graduate student studying physics from the fall of
2000 to the spring of 2001.
“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.
Neves Valente and Loureiro previously attended the same academic program
at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, U.S. attorney for
Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics
program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering
school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year, Neves
Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according
to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president
in February 2000.
Neves Valente had come to Brown on a student visa. He eventually
obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017, Foley said.
It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of
absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017. His last
known residence was in Miami.
After officials revealed the suspect's identity, President Donald Trump
suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to
stay in the United States.
There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island
Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown,
why these students and why this classroom,” he said.
Tip helps investigators connect the dots
The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the Rhode Island and
Massachusetts shootings.
Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente
for providing a crucial tip that led authorities to him.
After police shared security video of a person of interest, the witness
— known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit — recognized him
and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users
urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.
John said he had encountered Neves Valente hours earlier in the bathroom
of the engineering building where the shooting occurred and noticed he
was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the
affidavit. He again bumped into Neves Valente a couple blocks away and
saw him suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.
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Law enforcement officers are seen outside a storage facility where a
suspect in the shooting at Brown University was found dead,
Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)
“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the
car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.
His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida
plates. That enabled Providence police to tap into a network of more
than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance
company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other
vehicle details.
After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente
stuck a Maine license plate over his rental car’s plate to help
conceal his identity.
Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment
building near Loureiro's in a Boston suburb. About an hour later,
Neves Valente was seen entering the Salem, New Hampshire, storage
facility where he was found dead, Foley said. He had with him a
satchel and two firearms, Neronha said.
Victims include renowned physicist, political organizer and
aspiring doctor
Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, had joined
MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma
Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest laboratories. The
scientist from Viseu, Portugal, had been working to explain the
physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.
The two Brown students killed during a study session for final exams
were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman
Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov. Cook was active in her Alabama church and
served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans.
Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he
was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.
As for the wounded, three had been discharged and six were in stable
condition Thursday, officials said.
Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the
attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that
has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter
entered and left through a door that faces a residential street
bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does
have didn’t capture footage of the person.
___
Associated Press reporters Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Hallie Golden in Seattle
and Matt O'Brien in Providence contributed.
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