Authorities have confirmed that the individual suspected of carrying out the fatal shooting at Brown University has been discovered deceased.
The tragic incident at the Ivy League school resulted in the deaths of two students and left at least nine others injured after a gunman opened fire in a classroom on Saturday.
A comprehensive investigation had been launched, complete with a manhunt to locate the suspect. On Thursday evening, during a news conference, police announced that the suspect had been found dead.
The suspect has been identified as 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Nueves Valente, a Portuguese national whose last known residence was in Miami, Florida, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez reported.
Authorities discovered Nueves Valente’s body in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire. It appears he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “He may have been dead for a bit of time,” a senior official noted.
Nueves Valente was previously a PhD candidate in physics at Brown from 2000 until he took a leave of absence in the spring of 2001. He formally withdrew from the university in 2003, as stated by Brown University President Christina Paxson.
Rhode Island’s Attorney General Peter Neronha revealed that the suspect was found with a satchel, two firearms, and evidence in his car that corresponded precisely with items observed at the Providence crime scene.
The breakthrough came after a public tip-off, which proved to be instrumental in locating Nueves Valente.
“He blew this case right open. He blew it open,” Mr. Neronha remarked.
“That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photographs of that individual renting the car, which matched the clothing of our shooter here in Providence, that matched the satchel.”
On Thursday, authorities also disclosed an investigation into a possible connection between the Brown University shooting and the murder of an MIT physics professor.
Professor Nuno Loureiro, 47, was shot and killed at his home two days following the Brown incident.
Federal officials confirmed the connection between the two cases at the news conference, as they announced the death of the ‘Brown University and MIT professor shooter’.
They also assured the public that there was ‘no longer a threat to the public’.