Brown University Shooting: Suspect Found Dead in N.H. Storage Facility

By Flint McColgan and Todd Prussman

Source Boston Herald

The suspected shooter who killed two Brown University students on Saturday has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility.

“Tonight our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said at a 9:35 p.m. press conference. “I want to thank the people of Providence for stepping up and coming together during an extraordinarily difficult time.”

FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Ted Docks said “We got him,” and identified the shooting suspect as Claudio Naves Valente. He also confirmed the 48-year-old man was also tied to the slaying of an MIT professor in his home in Brookline.

A school official said that Valente was a Brown PhD student in physics from 2000 to 2001 and formally withdrew from the program in 2003. He took only physics classes, most of which are held in the Barus & Holley building where Saturday’s deadly shooting took place.

Colonel Oscar L. Perez, Jr., the Providence chief of police, said he wanted to “offer my deepest condolences to the families, the victims. It was for them that this work was put together to put this work together to make sure that they get the justice they deserve and that this person was held accountable.”

“The unthinkable happened in our state, the unthinkable happened in Providence, the unthinkable happened at Brown University,” Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee said. “And we will be forever changed.”

Authorities say that a person of interest seen interacting with the shooter “blew this case wide open” when he came forward to police, identified himself as the person in the video and provided key information.

The shooter was found dead with the satchel seen in photos of the shooter and with two firearms, authorities say.

Perez said that the investigation really took off when investigators found a vehicle of interest that they then tracked to a car rental in Massachusetts and were able to get the suspect’s name from there.

The Herald was on the ground in Salem, New Hampshire, as police and federal authorities surrounded a Extra Space Storage facility on Hampshire Road off of Route 28, just north of the Massachusetts border.

The New Hampshire development came not long after sources said that investigators were probing a possible connection between Saturday’s deadly shooting at Brown University and the shooting death of an MIT professor at his home in Brookline.

The new investigative details pushed back a press conference Thursday on the Brown University case originally scheduled for 4 p.m. that had still not begun by press time. A little after 9 p.m. an official gave a 20-minute warning that the press conference would start.

Joe Dwinell contributed to this story.

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