Suspect in Brown shootings takes his own life
By Steve Klamkin Latino Public Radio
A man suspected of bursting into a Brown University classroom, opening fire and killing two students, wounding nine others last Saturday was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound Thursday at a storage unit in Southern New Hampshire after an intensive manhunt.
“We got him,” said Ted Docks, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Boston FBI office at a news conference Thursday night in the Providence Public Safety complex.
Authorities said Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a legal Portuguese immigrant and former Brown graduate student whose last known address was in Miami, Florida was found dead earlier Thursday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound at a storage business where he had rented a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.
Docks said the manhunt involved 500 FBI agents. Also involved were Providence Police detectives and agents from an array of state and federal law enforcement agencies.
Valente was also suspected in the shooting death Monday night of MIT physics professor Dr. Nuno F.G. Loureiro at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. Valente and Loureiro both attended a physics program at a university in Lisbon, Portugal, where Loureiro graduated in 2000.
Forty four rounds were fired into the ground-floor classroom in the Barus and Holley science and engineering building at Brown, killing two students, leaving nine others wounded, said Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez, who added Valente acted alone.
As of Thursday night, three students had been released from the hospital, six others remained hospitalized, all had been upgraded to stable condition, said Providence Mayor Brett Smiley.
“This has been a traumatic moment for our community,” said Smiley. “I hope today’s announcement provides some closure and starts the healing process.”
Valente briefly studied physics at Brown in 2001.
Authorities said Valente rented a car in Boston and “cased” the Brown campus prior to the shootings. An encounter in a bathroom in the Brown science building where the shootings occurred with a man who thought Valente was acting suspiciously eventually led to identifying Valente and his Nissan rental car on surveillance cameras.
No motive for the shootings was known, said Chief Perez, who added that the investigation was continuing.
“There’s a lot of unknowns with respect to motive,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha. “I think there are other answers that are coming. I think that once we were able to identify him, thanks to that individual who came forward, who led us to a (license) plate, which led us to a rental car, that he rented that car in his own name, that really broke the case open. But, in terms of why Brown? I think that
is a mystery.”
“I don’t think we have any idea of why now, or why… why Brown, or why these students, why this classroom? That is really unknown to us. It might become clearer, I hope that it does, but it hasn’t as of right now,” Neronha said.
