A Reddit post led to a breakthrough in the Brown shooting investigation

BRIAN SNYDER / REUTERS

Images of the shooter at Brown University, identified by authorities as Claudio Neves Valente, are displayed during a press conference on Thursday, as civic leaders and law enforcement announce Valente has been found dead, in Providence, R.I.

The first police officers arrived just after 4 p.m. last Saturday after reports of an active shooter at Brown University. They found a lecture room full of gunshot victims in one of the science buildings.

The body of Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov was near the back doors of the sloped, auditorium-style hall. Another student, Ella Cook, had died on the floor between rows of seats. Nine others were bleeding and injured, some critically, and needed rescue.

And the killer? He had already slipped away, escaping a vast police dragnet imposed on the campus and the surrounding streets in the East Side neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island. There would be no armed standoff, no negotiation: Investigators were going to have to track the gunman down.

The scene inside the lecture hall was nightmarish, but also teeming with potential evidence. Investigators said they collected 44 spent 9-mm shell casings and an additional unfired round from inside the lecture room and the hallway just outside it, in the Barus and Holley science building, a 1960s-style concrete and brick midrise.

The story of the manhunt and the ultimate resolution of the investigation, pieced together through affidavits filed in the case, interviews and statements by officials, and a review of social media posts, suggests an investigation that regrouped after a false start, aided by a crucial tip that finally broke open the case.

The shooter had apparently left behind two high-capacity magazines, each able to hold about 30 rounds. DNA from the shell casings was sent out for an expedited analysis. It did not match anyone in the FBI’s national DNA database.

Don't miss out on what's happening!

Stay in touch with breaking news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It's FREE!

Email Sign Up
By clicking to sign up, you agree to Star-Advertiser's and Google's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. This form is protected by reCAPTCHA.

The eyewitnesses to the chaos told investigators that the shooter was a man, medium build, dressed in black, wearing a medical mask and wielding a handgun with a green laser sight. The killer might have howled a barking noise before he started firing, according to some witnesses, though others did not remember him saying anything before spraying the auditorium with bullets.

Authorities pursued possible video evidence. Canvassing security cameras in the surrounding area, investigators discovered images of a potential suspect — a heavyset man in a dark jacket and medical mask — who appeared several times on video in the late morning and early afternoon before the shooting, circling the area near the Barus and Holley building. The FBI used images from a nearby home security camera to compare the suspect’s height with a fence gate, estimating him to be between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 9.

Investigators showed one of the captured photos to at least three eyewitnesses. One of them froze and teared up upon seeing the picture. Yes, they all agreed, that was the shooter.

On Saturday night, police reached out for the public’s help, releasing security video of the suspect walking near Brown. His face was not visible.

Early Sunday, working from a tip generated by Providence police, the FBI tracked the cellphone of a potential suspect to a hotel in Coventry, Rhode Island, about 20 miles south of Providence. Federal and local officers descended on the hotel and detained a 24-year-old Wisconsin man. In his room, they found two firearms. It seemed to be compelling evidence, and the Providence police chief said at a news conference that officers were not looking for anyone else.

But investigators had not yet received back scientific test results on evidence, and by that evening, when the tests came back, it was clear they had the wrong man.

On Monday, while investigators in Providence continued to sift through tips, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, was fatally shot in his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. The killer had fled.

Police officers and FBI agents working on the Brown case did not at first see any connection between the mass shooting in Rhode Island and the killing of a professor in a Boston suburb about 50 miles away.

Officials in Providence again beseeched the public for tips. Police officers went door-to-door in the neighborhoods around Brown, looking for more footage from security and doorbell cameras.

Then on Tuesday, a tip pointed the police to a Reddit post that grabbed their attention: “I’m being dead serious,” an anonymous poster had written about the Brown shooting. “The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental.”

The Nissan, the poster said, had been parked on a street corner in a residential neighborhood near Brown, sheltered by trees and bushes. A day after the Reddit post was made, a man authorities confirmed was the writer approached law enforcement officials and told them about the car and an odd encounter he had with a suspicious man in Brown’s Barus and Holley building.

The tipster, whom police referred to only as John, told them that he encountered the man in a bathroom on the ground floor of the building between 1:45 p.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday, about two hours before the shooting. John said that the man’s clothing seemed out of place, too flimsy for the cold weather. They had made eye contact, he later told officers.

John followed the man after he left the building to the parked Nissan, and watched as the man unlocked it. But instead of getting in the car, the man started walking around the block, with John trailing like “a game of cat and mouse,” he told police.

At one point, the two men spoke. According to the police affidavit, John asked the unidentified man, “Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?” To which the suspect responded, “Why are you harassing me?”

Once they knew about the car, law enforcement agencies could home in on traffic, door and garage cameras all over the upscale neighborhood, which authorities had become convinced was where the gunman was both before and after the shootings. And when they located the car on video and identified it, the registration led to a rental business in Boston, and then to the name of the person who had rented the Nissan.

“That’s really what broke the case open,” Peter F. Neronha, the Rhode Island attorney general, said in an interview Friday.

They identified the gunman as Claudio Neves Valente, a former Brown student. A native of Portugal, Neves Valente, 48, was a legal permanent U.S. resident with an address in Miami.

It appeared that he had returned to the Brown University campus some 25 years after briefly studying there, and for reasons still apparently unknown, opened fire in a science building in which he had very likely taken classes in his 20s.

Traffic and security cameras later showed that for almost two weeks before the shooting, Neves Valente had lurked around the Brown campus, where he had been enrolled as a graduate student in physics from the fall of 2000 until taking leave in the spring of 2001. He dropped out in 2003.

On Dec. 1, Neves Valente had rented the Nissan from a downtown Boston car rental business, the police learned. He had rented a car in Boston at least one other time in recent weeks, Neronha said.

Connecting Neves Valente to the car also connected him to the murder of Loureiro, the MIT professor, who investigators learned had been a former classmate of Neves Valente in Portugal.

Loureiro was currently a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT. Both men had studied at the same time, 1995 to 2000, at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, authorities said.

Although Neves Valente’s movements the past few weeks are not yet entirely known, investigators were able to determine that he may have been in New England “throughout 2025,” Leah Foley, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said at a news conference.

On Sunday, the day after the Brown shooting, Neves Valente apparently logged into his email account from an IP address near Boston University, about a half-mile from the Brookline home of Loureiro, according to documents in the case.

By early Thursday, the leaders of the investigation faced a difficult decision, Neronha said. Neves Valente had extended his rental car contract once and was scheduled to return the Nissan to the car agency late that morning. If authorities released his name and a photo of his face to the public, they might get reports on his whereabouts. On the other hand, he could flee if he learned that he had been identified.

The collective decision by the agency leaders in the case, according to Neronha, was to keep the name secret and have officers wait for Neves Valente at the car rental company. He did not show up. Another lead suggested that Neves Valente might have changed his drop-off location to an airport in Connecticut, but that did not pan out, either.

Still, investigators were optimistic. “As soon as you have a name, I believe you can find anybody in this country,” Neronha said at a news conference.

Records located with the help of the FBI, he said, indicated that Neves Valente had rented a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.

Video showed that Monday evening, Neves Valente drove his rented Nissan west, out of Boston, with fraudulent Maine license plates attached. He arrived that night at the storage center, went in and did not come out.

Police surrounded the facility Thursday night. The search that had begun in Providence with hundreds of heavily armed officers ended quietly: Police officers found Neves Valente dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in an otherwise empty storage locker. He probably died Tuesday, according to a statement from New Hampshire’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Neves Valente had two guns with him, one by his feet, the other in his lap, Neronha said.

The weapons were consistent with the firearms used in the shootings at Brown and also in the MIT case, according to a person briefed on the investigation who was not authorized to release the information. The firearms still have to be tested to confirm a match with the ballistics found at both scenes, the person said.

No note of explanation by Neves Valente has been found, Neronha said Friday afternoon.

Of all the outstanding questions about the crime, the one the attorney general said he would most like to answer is the one of motive — why did he do it? On that one, investigators are still stuck.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

See more:National news

5 Comments
By participating in online discussions you acknowledge that you have agreed to the Terms of Service. An insightful discussion of ideas and viewpoints is encouraged, but comments must be civil and in good taste, with no personal attacks. If your comments are inappropriate, you may be banned from posting. Report comments if you believe they do not follow our guidelines. Having trouble with comments? Learn more here.
Please log in to comment