Tragic Mass Shooting at Brown University Leaves Two Dead, Suspect Found Dead

Fri Dec 19 2025 12:30:18 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

A mass shooting at Brown University claimed two lives and left nine others injured. The suspect, former student Claudio Neves Valente, was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot in a New Hampshire storage facility.

Claudio Neves Valente, the suspect in last weekend's tragic shooting spree at Brown University, was discovered deceased in a New Hampshire storage facility. Authorities have linked him to the shooting that resulted in the deaths of two students and wounding of nine others, as well as the murder of an MIT professor shortly thereafter. Investigations suggest Valente acted alone, but the motives behind the attacks remain unclear. Meanwhile, the victims included a renowned physicist and two students from Brown University, prompting an outpouring of sadness across the community.

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.

Neves Valente had come to Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017. 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 to the suspect.

“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.

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. 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 were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, both of whom were active in their communities. The victims’ untimely deaths have left a profound impact on the campus and beyond.

As for the wounded, three had been discharged and six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said.