Three days after a deadly shooting rattled Brown University, which killed at least two people, investigators received an anonymous tip that stood out amid a flood of information.
The message directed authorities to a post on Reddit that would ultimately prove pivotal in unravelling not only the Brown campus attack but also the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor days later.
What did the Reddit post say?
In the Reddit post, the user urged police to look into a grey Nissan, The New York Times reported in an exclusive piece, citing the police.
“I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the Reddit user posted, according to an affidavit filed by the police in Providence. R.I.
According to an affidavit filed by Providence police, the post caught investigators’ attention because it referenced specific details not widely known at the time. The individual who made the post later contacted law enforcement directly and described a suspicious encounter inside Brown University’s Barus and Holley building.
Tipster had encountered the suspect
The tipster, identified by police only as John, said he encountered the suspect in a ground-floor bathroom roughly hours before the first shots were reported. John told police the man’s clothing seemed inappropriate for the weather and that the two made eye contact, which left him unsettled. After the man exited the building, John followed him outside and observed him near a Nissan with Florida plates.
Instead of getting into the car, the suspect began circling the block, with John trailing behind. John described the encounter as a “game of cat and mouse.”
When shown images of a vehicle captured on security cameras, John told police the car “might be it.” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha later said the information “blew this case right open.”
Who was the suspect?
Investigators soon learned that another Brown faculty member had reported seeing a similar grey sedan with Florida plates in the same area. The car was traced to an Alamo rental location in downtown Boston, leading authorities to a suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente.
Further investigation revealed that Neves Valente was a 48-year-old Portuguese national and a former Brown University student who had enrolled in a physics Ph.D. program in 2000 before withdrawing a few years later. Records showed he returned to the United States as a legal permanent resident in 2017.
Surveillance footage later connected the same vehicle to the area near the home of Nuno F.G. Loureiro, an MIT professor who was killed days after the Brown shooting. Investigators ultimately tracked Neves Valente to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where he was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Trump calls off program through which suspect entered US
Valente entered the US through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017, which Trump has now decided to call off. Authorities said the motive behind the attacks remains unclear.