As authorities are still working to establish the motives of the Brown University shooter, who also killed an MIT professor, it has emerged that investigators relied on an anonymous Reddit post in order to blow the case open.
Gunman Claudio Neves Valente was found dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, according to Leah B. Foley, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, who told the media.
Foley said that Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was found with a pair of firearms matching those used at Brown University on December 12.
It was a Reddit user who said that they saw the car driven by Neves Valente getting into a grey Nissan sedan with a Florida license plate, steps away from the Barus and Holley building, where the Brown shooting took place.
“I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the person wrote. Officials later confirmed that the post was “consistent with and corroborated by” other surveillance footage.
Meanwhile, new evidence shared by Brown University revealed that Neves Valente had attended the Ivy League school during the fall of 2000, before taking a leave of absence in 2001. He later dropped out entirely in 2003.
Foley confirmed that Neves Valente was also a former classmate of murdered MIT physics professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, with the pair attending an academic course in Portugal from 1995 until 2000.
Neves Valente allegedly killed Loureiro at his home in Brookline, New Hampshire, three days after the Brown shooting.
However, his reason for targeting his former classmate and his alma mater remains unknown.
Foley said authorities had located Neves Valente after obtaining video footage of his car, which they quickly traced to a dealership.
Upon obtaining the rental agreement for the vehicle, police were finally provided with Neves Valente’s name. That allowed them to track him to New Hampshire, where authorities were investigating the murder of leading nuclear fusion scientist Loureiro.
“There was security footage that captured him within a half mile of the professor’s residence in Brookline,” Foley told reporters. “And there is video footage of him entering an apartment building in the location of the professor’s apartment.
“He was seen about an hour later entering the storage unit, wearing the same clothes that he had been seen wearing right after the murder.”
The Reddit user, named John in the complaint, said he first saw the suspect in the bathrooms of the Barus and Holley building at 1:45 pm, around two hours before the gunfire began, and even made eye contact with him.
John proceeded to follow Neves Valente to his car, for unclear reasons, noticing two fanny packs on the floor of the vehicle in the process. The gunman then circled the block and accused John of “harassing” him before going back to his car, which is the last time John saw him.
The internet has been awash with conspiracy theories about the killing, with sources telling The Jerusalem Post that Israeli officials are questioning whether Iranian agents played a role in his death.
Loureiro was one of the U.S’s leading nuclear scientists and had publicly spoken in support of Israel. However, The Jerusalem Post admitted that U.S. and Israeli authorities confirmed that no evidence has been found to substantiate the theory yet.
The shooting has led Donald Trump to axe the green card lottery program that Neves Valente used to re-enter the U.S in 2017.
The program offers 50,000 green cards per year and allows people from countries underrepresented in the US to obtain visas.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wrote on X. “In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
Neves Valentes’ alma mater is currently mourning two of its students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, whom he murdered after he opened fire on December 12.
Umurzokov, 18, was an aspiring neurosurgeon before being shot, whom his family described as their “biggest role model” in a GoFundMe campaign.
Cook, 19, had served as the vice president of the Brown University College Republicans before being killed by Neves Valente.
