The suspect in the shooting Saturday at Brown University that killed two students and injured nine was found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit, authorities announced Thursday night.
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, was discovered at a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, said Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez at a news conference.
Neves Valente was a former Brown student and Portuguese national, who was last known to live in Miami, Perez said. Authorities tracked the man through video surveillance that led to a car rental agency in Massachusetts.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente attended the Ivy League school from 2000 to 2001 and studied physics.
The arrest came as a relief to many on campus and in the surrounding Providence community, who endured five days of fear and uncertainty as the investigation foundered with few leads.
“Tonight our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier,” said Providence Mayor Brett Smiley.
The day of the shooting, authorities released the first images from area surveillance cameras of a man who they believed to be connected to the shooting, offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his identification and arrest.
Law enforcement officials on Sunday initially focused on a different “person of interest” but cleared and released him later that night. Investigators continued to scour the area for clues, forming lines and sweeping aside freshly fallen snow with their feet as they searched neighboring streets.
Additional video images and maps were released this week, showing the suspect walking the area near campus hours before and after the shooting.
The shooting took place about 4 p.m. Saturday at Barus and Holley Hall in a stadium-style seating classroom where students were gathered for an economics class review session ahead of final exams. The building houses the university’s houses the school of engineering and physics department. Paxson said Neves Valente would have spend time in the building during his time as a student.
Students described hearing gunshots just before seeing a man in a face mask burst into the classroom and start firing. Ref Bari, a physics graduate student, said he ran out of the building when the shooting started and hid in a bathroom for hours with other fleeing strangers.
“There were rumors that the shooter was out on the street, like feet from us, and it was so terrifying,” Bari told NPR’s “Here and Now.” He called 911 from the bathroom, and said he told police “there were gunshots behind me,” only to be told by police they didn’t know how many active shooters there were, and he should stay sheltered.
“It’s just this feeling of helplessness,” Bari said. “There’s no Superman who’s going to save the day. It’s you and your friends.”
Brown students Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, were killed.
Cook, from Birmingham, Ala., was vice president of Brown’s college Republican club, and according to her obituary, had “a heart as big as the sun” and “evinced a sort of ‘silent leadership,’ to quote her brother Hooker.” She was known for “her persistent courage in following both heart and conscience” as well as her wide array of interests. She loved spending time with friends, babysitting, teaching Bible classes and pursuing her studies at Brown, where she was majoring in French and Mathematics-Economics.
Cook was remembered at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, as “an incredible, grounded, faithful, bright light,” both at home and at Brown.
Alabama Lt. Governor Will Ainsworth posted on X that Cook “represented the very best of Alabama. A bright future was ended much too soon.”
Umurzokov, a naturalized citizen, immigrated to the United States in 2011 from Uzbekistan. The U.S. embassy in Uzbekistan said it was mourning “the loss of a “bright future.”
Freshman Shane Toomey said Umurzokov wanted to be a neurosurgeon, and loved learning so much he was at that economics review session just hoping to learn something new – he wasn’t even enrolled in the class.
“He could hold a conversation with anybody about just about anything and then pivot to something entirely different,” Toomey told Ocean State Media. Umurzokov, he added, seemed “to be friends with every single person you walk by on a campus of thousands of people.”
On Sunday, Brown University canceled all remaining in-person exams for the fall semester to “focus our efforts on providing care and support to the members of our community” and to “grapple with the sorrow, fear and anxiety that is impacting all of us right now.”
