What We Know About the Suspect in the Brown and M.I.T. Killings

Officials identified a man from Portugal as the suspect in the deadly shooting at Brown University and the killing of an M.I.T. professor. The police said he died from a self-inflicted gunshot.

The authorities identified a Portuguese man on Thursday night as the suspect in the deadly shooting at Brown University and in the killing of a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The man, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, killed two students and injured nine others on Saturday on the Brown campus in Providence, R.I., according to the city’s police chief. He managed to leave the campus and eluded the police for days.

While the manhunt went on, he traveled to Brookline, Mass., where he shot a professor at M.I.T. on Monday, according to the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts. On Thursday, the police found Mr. Neves Valente’s body inside a storage unit in Salem, N.H., where he had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Here is what we know about the suspect:

• Academic career: Mr. Neves Valente briefly studied physics as a graduate student at Brown University, enrolling in the fall of 2000. He took a leave of absence in April 2001 before formally withdrawing in 2003. While at the university, he very likely spent time in Barus and Holley, the physics complex where the shooting later occurred. Officials said there was no indication that he knew the two students who were killed or the nine people who were wounded in the attack. A student in Brown’s physics Ph.D. program at the same time as Mr. Neves Valente said he was introverted and struggled academically.
• Portuguese roots: Mr. Neves Valente entered the United States on a student visa through Boston Logan International Airport in 2000 from Portugal. He became a lawful permanent resident in 2017.
• Earlier studies: Mr. Neves Valente studied physics along with the M.I.T. professor, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, in the 1990s at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier school for science and engineering, and graduated at the top of the class, the university said. Dr. Loureiro, 47, was found shot in his home in Brookline, Mass., on Monday night and was pronounced dead Tuesday morning. Leah Foley, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said she believed Mr. Valente knew Dr. Loureiro but did not elaborate on the nature of their relationship. Scientists at the institute remembered Dr. Loureiro affectionately, but said they did not recall Mr. Neves Valente from his time there.
• Florida address: The suspect’s last known address was in a residential neighborhood north of Miami, officials said. During his time at Brown, he had an address in Providence, according to an affidavit.
• Rental car: Mr. Neves Valente rented a Nissan Sentra in Boston on Dec. 1 and drove to Brown, the police said. He took “sophisticated” steps to hide his identity, the authorities said, changing the car’s license plate and using a phone that disguised his location. After killing Dr. Loureiro, the authorities said, he drove to a storage unit he had rented in Salem.
• Breakthrough: A post on Reddit that pointed to a suspicious car helped lead the authorities to Mr. Neves Valente. The writer later approached law enforcement and told them about his encounter with a suspicious man at Brown.
• Weapons: Guns were found in the storage unit. “At this point, it’s certainly an active investigation into where and how they came from,” said a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
• Motive: “I think there’s a lot of unknowns,” said Peter F. Neronha, the Rhode Island attorney general. “In terms of why Brown? I think that’s a mystery.”

Victor Mather contributed reporting.

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