The suspect in the Brown University mass shooting was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Thursday night in a New Hampshire storage unit he had rented. The suspect was identified as Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, who attended Brown over two decades ago. He was reportedly enrolled as a graduate student from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. Brown President Christina H. Paxson said in a statement, “During his time at Brown, Neves Valente was enrolled only in physics classes, and it is likely that he would have taken courses and spent time in Barus & Holley,” referring to the building where the shooting took place.
Authorities said they believe Neves Valente is also responsible for the murder of MIT physics professor Nuno Loureiro at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, just 48 hours after the Brown shooting that killed two students and wounded nine others. Neves Valente was reportedly a teaching assistant in the same university Loureiro attended between 1995 and 2000 in Portugal. Investigators say tips from a Brown campus custodian helped to narrow down the dayslong search for the suspect. Neves was reportedly spotted at Brown’s Barus and Holley building in the days before the shooting, including at least twice by the custodian, who said he’d seen a person wearing a surgical mask and whose clothing matched the individual’s seen in surveillance footage released by police.
In the wake of the killings, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the Trump administration is suspending its diversity visa lottery program. Neves Valente entered the country on a student visa in 2000 and was granted a green card through the visa program in 2017.










