The suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, with investigators certain he also killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days later, officials said on Thursday.
The gunman, identified as Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente, 48, was found dead Thursday night in a storage rental facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where he had rented a unit last month, officials said.
Valente attended Brown University more than two decades ago as a Ph.D. student in physics and was a former classmate in Portugal of slain MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, 47. Despite those links, authorities said that his motive in the killings remains a mystery.
“I don’t think we have any idea why now, or why Brown, or why these students, why this classroom,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, at a Thursday night press conference in Providence, where the university is located.
Valente entered a building used for Brown’s engineering and physics programs on December 13 and fired at least 44 rounds from his 9 mm pistol, killing two students and injuring another nine, according to the Providence police affidavit for his arrest.
Then, officials say, he fatally shot Loureiro inside his home before disappearing and leading investigators on a manhunt that stretched over five days. Authorities said two guns — including the 9 mm pistol they believe was used in the killings — were found by his corpse.
In Boston, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said at a press conference that investigators had evidence that made them certain that Valente, who was living in Miami and was a lawful permanent resident of the United States, murdered Loureiro in his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
The Trump administration quickly pointed to Valente’s permanent residency status as a reason to halt the Diversity Immigrant Visa program’s lottery system that awards green cards to people from countries with relatively low numbers of immigrants to the United States.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X late Thursday.
Noem said she would “immediately” implement a directive by President Donald Trump to pause the green-card lottery “to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
Foley said Valente and Loureiro had attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal from 1995 to 2000.
