Reddit post helped identify suspect in Brown shooting and MIT professor killing

A Reddit post from an eyewitness helped investigators identify the man police say killed two Brown University students and later fatally shot an MIT physics professor, according to an affidavit from the Providence Police Department.

The affidavit says Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, was responsible for the campus shooting at Brown University in Providence, R.I., on Saturday that killed students Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, and injured nine others. Two days later, MIT physics professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was killed at his home in Brookline, Mass., about 50 miles from Providence.

Earlier this week, law enforcement tracked Valente to a storage unit in Salem, N.H., where he was found dead, according to the source text. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said authorities would not be able to prosecute him, adding that he hoped the outcome would provide “some small measure of closure for the victims and their families.”

Police said Valente had ties to Brown and to Loureiro. The affidavit states Valente arrived in the United States in August 2000 as a graduate student at Brown on an F-1 visa. He was enrolled in Brown’s Ph.D. physics program from fall 2000 until the spring 2001 semester, took a leave of absence, and officially withdrew in fall 2003.

Leah Foley, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said at a Thursday news conference that Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program between 1995 and 2000 at a university in Portugal.

The affidavit says Valente was born in Torres Novas, Santarem, Portugal, and was a legal permanent resident of the United States. It states that in May 2017 he received a diversity immigrant visa and in September 2017 was admitted to the country as a legal permanent resident at JFK International Airport in New York.

Police said Valente’s last known address was in Miami. The source text says it is unclear what happened during Valente’s life or what he was doing from 2017 until the days leading up to the shootings.

Investigators described a key break in the case coming from Reddit. According to the affidavit, on Dec. 16, three days after the Brown shooting, investigators received information from an anonymous source pointing to a post in the Providence subreddit that referenced details about the attack. At that time, police had released only surveillance images of the suspect.

In the affidavit, the witness who wrote the post is referred to as “John.” The post said the witness saw the suspect, later identified as Valente, walking near Brown before the shooting and urged police to look into “a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental.” The post also said the car was parked behind the Rhode Island Historical Society on Cooke Street, near the Brown campus.

The affidavit says John approached Providence police officers on Dec. 17 and described his encounters with Valente. Investigators wrote that John first saw Valente in a bathroom inside Brown’s Barus Holley building about two hours before the shooting. John described Valente’s clothing as “flimsy,” “poor quality” and “inappropriate and inadequate” for the weather, and said Valente wore a face mask covering the entire lower half of his face.

John later saw Valente near the Rhode Island Historical Society and watched him approach a gray Nissan with Florida plates parked by the building, according to the affidavit. John told police a game of “cat and mouse” followed as he continued to follow Valente, and that he confronted him. The affidavit says Valente responded: “I don’t know you from nobody. Why are you harassing me?”

The story was described in the source text as developing.