The suspected gunman being held responsible for the mass shooting at Brown University and a subsequent killing of an MIT professor was founded dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire. Providence authorities identified the person of interest as 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente during a press conference held in the United States on Thursday (US time).
As reported by the BBC and NYT, Brown University President Christina Paxson said that Valente studied at the varsity from the fall of 2000 to spring 2001. Per her account, he was studying for a PhD in physics at the time. While still at the university as a physics student in Rhode Island, he had access to the Barus & Holley engineering building, where the attack eventually took place this month.
Paxson added, Valente has “no current active affiliation” to Brown University. Rhode Island city’s police chief public statement also affirmed that Valente’s last known address was in Miami. The official further noted that Claudio changed license plates, using those linked to Florida and Maine, which made pinning him down difficult for the authorities.
Suspected Brown University-MIT shooter Claudio Neves Valente confirmed dead
The 48-year-old gunman, who was a Brown University student from Portugal took his own life on Thursday evening, as per the latest update in the investigation. Taking the mic at the press conference, Providence Chief of Police Oscar Perez said that public tips helped them track the suspect’s car to a car-rental location in Massachusetts.
It is there that they found the suspect’s name, which ultimately matched with that of their person of interest.
RI Police: The individual is identified as Claudio Neves Valenti, a 48-year-old man. He was a Brown student, a Portuguese national, and his last known address was in Miami, Florida. He took his own life pic.twitter.com/7x8XdOv1Q4
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 19, 2025
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said during the conference that they found Valente dead with a satchel and two firearms. Evidence in the car at the location matched to the scene of the shooting at Brown University, as per live updates from the conference.
“We got him,” said FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Ted Docks. “Even though the suspect was found dead tonight our work is not done. There are many questions that need to be answered.”
According to records from the prominent Portuguese engineering school Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), a man named Claudio Neves Valente was kicked off from a monitor position in February 2000, which also happens to be the same year Nuno Loureiro, the now-deceased MIT professor, graduated from IST, according to the Vanity Fair.
Link between Brown Uni shooting and MIT professor killing confirmed
Although another news conference will be held after the one in Providence, the US Attorney for Massachusetts, the top federal prosecutor in the state, has seemingly already confirmed the connection between the Brown University attack and the MIT professor Nuno Loureiro’s killing in Boston.
This starkly contradicts the FBI’s prior statement that pointed to potentially there being “no connection” between the two tragedies.
The next conference will take place in Boston and “announced death of Brown University and MIT professor shooter,” the prosecutor’s office wrote on X.
While a motive has yet to be determined, police also noted that Portugal and physics emerged as a common link between the suspect and the MIT professor who was killed. Both were born in Portugal and studied at the same university there.
The Brown University tragedy killed two students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, and wounded nine others last weekend. Merely days later, 47-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno FG Loureiro was fatally shot at his home in Brookline.
In a statement, MIT said Loureiro was a “faculty member in the departments of Nuclear Science & Engineering and Physics, as well as the Director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center,” as per ABC News. He joined the faculty in 2016.
So far, authorities have determined that the shooting suspect worked alone and the killings were not antisemitic in nature.
