Hi everyone-
The Brown University shooter was found dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire. In a manhunt that spanned three states, the Keystone Cops of the Providence Police finally got a tip that led them to the suspect. A rental car that was connected to both the Brown shooting and the murder of an MIT professor in his Brookline home was the linchpin.
But by the time cops got to the storage space's surveillance cameras showing him entering but not leaving, the Portuguese national was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It is so rare that a mass shooter is ever taken in alive. Either they kill themselves following their gruesome act or they are killed by police during the commission of it.
A five day hunt for leads and information turned into a manhunt on Thursday when police figured out the suspect's identity from the rental car paperwork and an arrest warrant was issued. The killing of the MIT professor barely made headlines when it happened on Monday. We saw it happen but we were all obsessed with the shooting at Brown.
What we know is that the suspect is 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who had been a student at Brown. He was found in a storage space in Salem, NH. He'd been meticulous in hiding his tracks. He used an untraceable phone and avoided using credit cards with his own name on them. He'd attended the same academic program as slain professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in Portugal. Valente was in the US on a green card and had no criminal record.
Valente was finally identified after an anonymous Reddit post, a tip from a custodian, and the ballistic evidence gathered at the scene of the crime. While Valente's killings may have been specifically targeted, it does not appear that he undertook his gruesome task for political reasons.
Libby