Brown University Shooter Found Dead
The alleged perpetrator of a school shooting and murder of an MIT professor was found dead after a major manhunt. The police response is another blow to increasingly embattled FBI Director Kash Patel
American politics is usually little more than a TV show. Unfortunately, what the lead characters do sometimes impacts Canada. Each week, Tripwire takes a look at the headlines coming out of Washington to find the stories that matter most to Canadians.
On Dec. 18, U.S. authorities located the body of Cláudio Manuel Neves-Valente, a suspect in multiple murders, dead in a storage facility in New Hampshire, apparently by suicide. Neves-Valente was wanted for both allegedly perpetrating the mass shooting at Brown University in Providence, R.I. on Dec. 13 and the assassination of an MIT professor on Dec. 15. Authorities were unable to locate Valente during a five-day manhunt. Neves-Valente was a 48-year-old Portuguese national who emigrated to the U.S. in 2000 and studied at Brown.
On the afternoon of Saturday, Dec. 13, a person who was allegedly Neves-Valente entered the Barus and Holley Building, which is part of Brown University’s engineering department. The gunman opened fire in a classroom where students were undertaking an exam review session. Two students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, were killed, and another nine were wounded. The shooter then escaped the school and evaded a massive police response. Authorities believe Neves-Valente studied in the Barus and Holley building while attending Brown. They have not yet said if they know Neves-Valente’s motive for the shooting.
Cook, who was from Birmingham, Al., was the vice president of Brown’s college Republican club and was majoring in French and economics. Her obituary says “her heart was as large as the sun”, “was intentionally concerned for the best interests of others,” and “carried a kind of personal magic within her”. Umurzokov was a naturalized Uzbek immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in 2011. According to a classmate Umurzokov was studying to be a neurosurgeon and was not even in the class the exam review was being held for, but “was just there to hang out with a classmate and learn something new”.
“I thought he was a political science student because he was very knowledgeable about politics,” said classmate Jack DiPrimio. “But it turns out he was, like, really interested in STEM. And I was shocked, and I was like, wow, this is a quintessential whiz kid.”
Two days later, Neves-Valente allegedly tracked down and murdered MIT professor Nuno Filipe Gomes Loureiro. Loureiro was found dead in his Brookline, Mass. apartment with multiple gunshot wounds. Loureiro was deputy director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Centre, the school’s largest lab. U.S. authorities believe Loureiro, who is also Portuguese, and Neves-Valente were former classmates in Portugal. It is not yet clear whether they maintained a relationship or why Neves-Valente would track down and murder Loureiro.
Police fruitlessly searched for a suspect for days before a member of the public provided vital information that cracked the case. Reddit user lamin_kaare posted a comment on a post about the story that he had seen someone he believed was the suspect driving a grey Nissan with Florida plates. He said he found the person’s behaviour strange and decided to investigate. Someone, possibly the poster, anonymously informed Providence police. The police got in touch with lamin_kaare, who was identified in an affidavit only as “John”.
“I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” John posted in a Reddit comment. “That was the car he was driving. It was parked in front of the little shack behind the Rhode Island Historical Society on the Cooke St side. I know because he used his key fob to open the car, approached it and then something prompted him to back away. When he backed away he relocked the car. I found that odd so when he circled the block I approached the car and that is when I saw the Florida plates. He was parked in the section between the gate of the RIHS and the corner of Cooke and George St.”
John told police that he noticed a person who was not dressed properly for the cold weather and said he and the suspect “locked eyes”. He said he then bumped into the man outside and described his encounter with him in more detail than he had given in the Reddit post. John said the man kept moving toward his car but backing away when he saw John in what John described as a “game of cat and mouse”.
“Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?” John asked the man who police believe was Neves-Valente. “I don’t know you from nobody,” Neves-Valente allegedly responded, along with repeatedly asking “Why are you harassing me?”
John also told police that the man he saw matched images the police had of a possible shooter. That information allowed the police to connect the vehicle to the shooter and then track it using the city’s surveillance cameras. They linked it to a car rental service in Boston, where they got the name of Neves-Valente.
“He blew this case right open,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha. “When you crack it, you crack it.”
The police then tracked the car to Massachusetts, where it was found close to Loureiro’s home, allowing them to link the two cases. The car was then tracked to the Salem, New Hampshire storage locker where Neves-Valente’s body was discovered. The New Hampshire Department of Justice Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said in a news release that Neves-Valente likely died Dec. 16.
In response to the shooting, U.S. President Donald Trump halted the Diversity Visa (DV) program, also known as the green card lottery. A green card identifies lawful permanent residents to the U.S. Every year, the U.S. awards up to 55,000 immigrant visas randomly to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. Neves-Valente entered the U.S. in the DV program in 2000 and received his green card in 2017. There were nearly 20 million applicants for the DV in 2025.
“The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted 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.”
Case Latest Challenge for Increasingly Embattled FBI Director
While Trump is focussed on immigration, there are more questions being raised about the FBI investigation. U.S. law enforcement hunted Neves-Valente for five days and both the FBI and Providence Police were unable to identify a suspect for days and FBI director Kash Patel posted the identity of one man on X who had been arrested. That man was later cleared by investigators, but had already gone viral on social media with people assuming he was the actual shooter. Law enforcement also had difficulty locating useful images of the shooter to help the public identify them.
Doubts have already been growing around Patel’s leadership of the FBI. Patel is a lawyer who has no experience with law enforcement and his tenure has been repeatedly marked by controversy. After serving in the first Trump administration he leveraged his connections to promote himself and his businesses, especially by appearing on podcasts. Patel was one of many Trump supporters who claimed the 2020 election was fraudulently stolen by the Democrats.
During the manhunt Patel and his girlfriend Alexis Wilkins were interviewed by conservative activist Katie Miller, the wife of U.S. Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller. The interview drew criticism as Patel was seen having a friendly conversation with a political ally at a time when the FBI was unable to track down a mass shooter at large.
During the interview, Patel defended himself from criticism that he had used an FBI plane for personal travel, including to attend a concert by Wilkins, who is a country music singer. He said FBI directors are required to use FBI planes and are not allowed to fly commercial, and claimed he used the plane less than previous directors.
“We’re taking the FBI plane because Congress 20 years ago said FBI directors are not allowed to take commercial air travel ever,” said Patel. “It’s ironic that they’re saying ‘You’re going on vacation’ or ‘You’re going to see your girlfriend perform.’ And if I was actually abusing it I would go see every one of her shows. I think I get to like 15 per cent.”
The Brown case is only the latest in a long line of issues for Patel. An internal 115-page FBI report leaked by the New York Post describes the agency under Patel as “rudderless” and “all fucked up”. One source for the report who described themselves as a Trump supporter said Patel is “not very good,” and that he “may be insecure”. They added that he “lacks the requisite experience” or the “measured self-confidence” to lead the FBI. Several people said they felt Patel and other senior leadership were more worried about their “personal résumés”.
The report also criticized deputy director Dan Bongino, calling him “something of a clown”. Bongino announced Wednesday that he plans to step down from his role in January and return to private life.
One incident described in the report as an example of Patel’s poor leadership came during the aftermath of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kirk was shot dead at an event at Utah Valley University by a sniper eventually alleged to be Tyler Robinson, who has been charged with Kirk’s murder. Patel flew to Provo, Utah to join the investigation but reportedly refused to leave the plane until being given an FBI raid jacket, which are the jackets with yellow FBI lettering on the back.
“Patel apparently did not have his own FBI raid jacket with him and refused to step from the plane without wearing one,” one person is quoted in the report as saying.
FBI agents investigating Kirk’s murder apparently had to stop what they were doing to help Patel locate a jacket. Eventually agents found a women’s medium that fit him, but upon receiving it Patel complained that there were no Velcro patches on the sleeves. Members of the FBI’s Utah SWAT team took off their patches and gave them to Patel, who can be seen wearing them in photos from the event.
This was only one of many incidents the report describes. Trump has yet to suggest he is losing confidence in Patel, and so far his administration has not seen the turnover that was present in his first term. But with few victories—among the only things FBI agents like about Patel is his overturning of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies—he could soon follow Bongino out the door.
