The manhunt after last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University is over after authorities say the suspected gunman was found dead by suicide Thursday night in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. Officials also say they have evidence linking him to the targeted killing of an MIT professor two days after the Brown attack, per The Associated Press.
Brown University is about 84 miles away while MIT is about 34 miles away from where the shooter was found.
Here’s what’s known as of Friday morning:
What happened at Brown
Police say a gunman opened fire Saturday, Dec. 13, inside Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering building during finals week, killing two students and wounding nine others.
Investigators say the shooter fired at least 44 rounds from a 9mm pistol.
Who investigators say the suspect was
Authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national and former Brown graduate student who attended the university in the early 2000s and had no current affiliation with the school.
Brown President Christina H. Paxson said in a statement that he was enrolled from fall 2000 to spring 2001, later took a leave, and formally withdrew effective July 31, 2003.
Where the suspect was found
Officials say Neves Valente was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, ending a multiday search across New England.
The link to the MIT professor’s killing
Federal prosecutors and investigators say Valente is also believed to have shot and killed MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, 47, at Loureiro’s home in Brookline, Massachusetts, on Dec. 15 — two days after the Brown shooting.
Authorities say the two men studied at the same university in Portugal in the late 1990s and are believed to have known each other, per The Associated Press.
How investigators say they tracked him
Investigators described a breakthrough involving a tipster who noticed suspicious behavior near campus and helped point law enforcement to a rental car lead.
Reuters reported that once police traced the vehicle back to a rental agency, security video and rental paperwork helped them identify Valente. Officials said he took steps to evade tracking, including switching plates, using a phone that was difficult to track and did not use credit cards attached to his name.
U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said, “He was sophisticated in hiding his tracks.”
The victims and the latest on the injured
Brown identified the two students killed as Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov.
As of Brown’s late Thursday update, Paxson said three of the injured had been discharged from the hospital and six were in stable condition.
What officials say they still don’t know
Authorities and Brown officials say the motive remains unclear, including why the Brown classroom was targeted.
“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.
Paxson urged caution about online speculation, saying community members have faced doxxing and baseless accusations, and expressed hope that identifying the suspect will help curb that behavior.
“It is my hope that this news also will end the harmful and dangerous online targeting of members of the Brown community, arising from rampant and baseless speculation, some of it based on individuals’ ethnic origin, culture and religion,” the statement read.
Noem suggests change to immigration program
In the hours after authorities named the suspect, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration would pause the Diversity Immigrant Visa, or green card lottery, program, pointing to the suspect’s immigration status.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X late Thursday.
She said the pause was “to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
The program allows up to 50,000 visas from low-immigration countries a year through random selection.
According to The Washington Post, “Trump unsuccessfully urged Congress to terminate the visa lottery in 2017 after another recipient, Sayfullo Saipov of Uzbekistan, carried out an Islamic State-inspired attack in Lower Manhattan that killed eight people and injured 18 others.”