Brown University attack suspect died 2 days before his body was found, autopsy finds

This image provided by Providence Police Dept. shows surveillance images of Claudio Neves Valente, a suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University. (Providence Police Dept. via AP)

An autopsy determined that the man suspected in last weekend’s attack at Brown University and the fatal shooting of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor days later had been dead for two days when his body was found, New Hampshire’s attorney general’s office said Friday.

Authorities found Claudio Neves Valente, 48, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a New Hampshire storage facility on Thursday night, said Providence’s police chief, Col. Oscar Perez.

The autopsy determined that Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who had been living in the U.S., died on Tuesday, the same day that his countryman, MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro died at a hospital, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella’s office said in a statement. It didn’t note an exact time of death.

Authorities believe that after killing two students and wounding nine others last Saturday at Brown, where he was a graduate student studying physics during the 2000-01 school year, Neves Valente shot Loureiro at his Boston-area home on Monday night.

Investigators on Friday were still trying to sort out why Neves Valente allegedly opened fire on the campus decades after he dropped out and later killed Loureiro, whom he attended school with in Portugal in the 1990s.

Motive is still unclear

The discovery of Neves Valente’s body at a New Hampshire storage facility ended the nearly weeklong hunt for the person who killed two students and wounded nine others in a Brown lecture hall last Saturday. Investigators believe the onetime Brown student killed Loureiro in his home in Brookline, a Boston suburb about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Providence, on Monday. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone.

Portugal’s foreign minister, Paulo Rangel, said Friday that the government was taken aback by revelations that a Portuguese man is the main suspect in the mass shooting at Brown and the killing of Loureiro.

Rangel said Portugal has provided “very broad cooperation” in the case. He said in comments to the national news agency Lusa that “the investigation is far from over.”

Brown University President Christina Paxson said while Neves Valente is a former Brown student, “he has no current affiliation with the university.”

Neves Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. That same year, Neves Valente was let go from his temporary student support and faculty liaison position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s president at the time.

Neves Valente, who was born in Torres Novas, Portugal, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) north of Lisbon, had come to Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent resident status in September 2017, Foley said. It wasn’t immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.

After officials revealed the suspect’s identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to stay in the United States.

There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.

Tip helps investigators connect the dots

The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.

Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente for providing a crucial tip that led authorities to him.

After police shared security video of a person of interest, the witness -- known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit -- recognized him and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.

John said he encountered Neves Valente about two hours before the attack in a bathroom in the engineering building, where the shooting occurred, and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. Still before the attack, he saw Neves Valente suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.

“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.

His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police to tap into a street camera network operated in the city by surveillance company Flock Safety to track the vehicle.

After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente stuck a Maine license plate over his rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.

Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s in a Boston suburb. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility where he was found dead, Foley said. He had with him a satchel and two firearms, Neronha said.

Victims include renowned physicist, political organizer and aspiring doctor

Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest laboratories. The scientist from Viseu, Portugal, had been working to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.

The two Brown students killed during a study session for final exams were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook, who was vice presdient of the Brown College Republicans, and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, who aspired to be a doctor.

Six of those wounded were in stable condition and three had been discharged as of Thursday, officials said.

Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.

Kimberlee Kruesi, Alanna Durkin Richer, Eric Tucker And Hannah Schoenbaum, The Associated Press

Associated Press reporters Barry Hatton and Helena Alves in Lisbon, Portugal, Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Matt O’Brien in Providence contributed.