An autopsy found that Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the suspect in the Brown University shooting and the killing of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, died by suicide on 16 December — two days before his body was found in a Salem storage locker. Valente is accused of a December attack at Brown's Barus & Holley building that killed two students and wounded nine others. Investigators linked the incidents across three states after a Reddit tip and rental-car tracing; his prior academic ties to Loureiro are under review and no motive has been established.
Autopsy: Suspect In Brown University Shooting Died By Suicide Two Days Before Being Found
Law enforcement gathers at Extra Space Storage in Salem, New Hampshire, on 18 December after the man suspected of the Brown University mass shooting was found dead there.Photograph: Kyle Mazza/Shutterstock
An autopsy has concluded that Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting and the slaying of an MIT professor, died by suicide on 16 December — two days before his body was recovered from a storage locker in Salem, Massachusetts.
What Investigators Found
New Hampshire's attorney general reported that Valente, 48, a Portuguese national who had been living in the United States, died on 16 December. That is the same day that MIT nuclear physics professor Nuno Loureiro died at a Massachusetts hospital.
Authorities say that three days earlier Valente carried out a shooting inside Brown University's Barus & Holley engineering building that killed two students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, and wounded nine others.
How The Cases Were Linked
The Providence and Massachusetts incidents were not immediately connected. Investigators pieced together a multi-state timeline and say a Reddit post by a homeless former Brown student who uses the name "John" helped point them toward Valente.
"That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photographs, which matched the clothing," Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. He added that Valente was found dead with a satchel containing two firearms, and evidence in the vehicle matched items recovered at the Providence scene.
Local tips described a gray Nissan leaving the Brown campus with Florida plates; a separate sighting near where Loureiro was shot mentioned a similar car with Maine plates. Investigators traced the Florida plates to a Boston car-rental office, which yielded the suspect's identity. The rental vehicle was later located outside a storage facility in Salem, where the suspect's body was discovered inside the unit.
Background And Ongoing Questions
Officials say Valente had been a doctoral student at Brown and had previously studied alongside Loureiro; both attended the same academic program at Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal between 1995 and 2000. Authorities have not publicly established a motive.
Portuguese officials said they are cooperating with investigators. In the United States, authorities have disputed accounts of how Valente entered the country: some public commentary blamed the green card lottery as the route of entry, while Providence police said Valente originally came on a student visa and later became a permanent resident in 2017.
Investigations into the shootings and the timeline across three states remain active, and officials say they will release more information as it becomes available.
