PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The man believed to have killed two students in a mass shooting at Brown University and to have fatally shot an MIT physicist in Boston was found dead in New Hampshire, authorities said, ending a multistate manhunt that gripped two of the nation’s top universities.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez identified the suspect as Claudio Neves-Valente, 48, a Portuguese national and student at Brown. Perez said Neves-Valente “took his own life tonight” and was discovered at a storage unit in New Hampshire alongside two firearms. Authorities said he is believed to have acted alone. There was no immediate indication of a motive in either attack.
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The Brown University shooting unfolded Saturday when a man carrying a rifle burst into a campus building as students were taking exams and opened fire. Two students were killed: Ella Cook, vice president of Brown’s Republican Party association, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, originally from Uzbekistan, who hoped to become a neurosurgeon. The gunman fled before police arrived.
Officials said earlier that one survivor was in critical but stable condition, five were in stable condition and two had been discharged from the hospital. Authorities did not immediately release the names of the wounded.
Investigators said the Providence probe led them to connect the Brown attack to the separate killing of a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in his Boston home. “The groundwork that started in the city of Providence … led us to that connection,” Perez said, without providing additional details. A news conference was expected in Boston.
For days, police had few public leads. They released images of a person of interest and another individual seen nearby, appealed for tips and provided daily media updates, voicing frustration as the search stretched on. Authorities initially detained a man in connection with the Brown shooting but later released him.
The discovery of Neves-Valente at the New Hampshire storage facility, and the recovery of two firearms there, appeared to break the case open late Monday. Officials did not say how investigators tracked him to the site, and it was not immediately clear whether the weapons found matched those used in the attacks.
The back-to-back shootings prompted new scrutiny of campus security. Brown faced questions — including from President Donald Trump — after it emerged that none of its roughly 1,200 security cameras are linked to Providence police’s surveillance system. University leaders and local officials have not yet announced any immediate changes to protocols.
The twin cases have added to a year of persistent gun violence in the United States. There have been more than 300 mass shootings so far in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot. Efforts to restrict access to firearms again face political deadlock in Washington and state capitals.
As investigators continued to map Neves-Valente’s movements, questions lingered about how a graduate student allegedly obtained a rifle and carried out two deadly attacks across state lines. Officials urged patience and said further information would be released as it was confirmed.
Brown University planned additional counseling and support for students and staff as the community mourned Cook and Umurzokov. Memorials of flowers and candles grew outside academic buildings, and exam schedules remained disrupted as the campus reeled from the violence.
Authorities asked anyone with information related to the suspect’s activities, the firearms or the New Hampshire storage unit to contact law enforcement as they piece together a timeline that now stretches from Providence to Boston to the Granite State.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
