Brown and MIT prof shooter suspect Neves Valente is found dead, authorities say
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the accused Brown University mass shooter, and alleged killer of an MIT professor
Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office
The man suspected of the shooting at Brown University that killed two students and injured nine others last Saturday, and then of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor days later, was found dead from suicide on Thursday, authorities said.
“There’s no longer a threat to the public,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston said in a statement.
The suspect in the shootings was identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national who had been a graduate student in physics at Brown in the early 2000s. Neves Valente most recently lived in Miami.
Authorities announced his identity and suspected role in the Brown shooting hours after his body was discovered in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, with guns found at the scene.
Video grab showing Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the suspect in the Brown University shooting on Dec. 13, 2025, shows him at an Alamo Rental Car in Boston, Massachusetts, on Dec. 1, 2025.
Source: Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office
Providence, Rhode Island, police had obtained a warrant for Neves Valente’s arrest charging him with two counts of murder, and multiple assault and firearms counts related to the shooting Saturday afternoon in an auditorium at Brown’s Barus & Holley Building, where a group of students were taking an exam review for Principles of Economics.
The MIT professor, Nuno Gomes Loureiro, 47, was found shot in his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, on Monday, and died at a hospital on Tuesday.
Authorities said they had identified Neves Valente as their suspect on Wednesday after a man who noticed him hanging around Brown’s campus, and who had had a confrontation with him before the shooting there, described their interactions to police.
“He blew this case right open,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said of that witness, at a press conference.
“Earlier this evening, law enforcement tracked Neves Valente to a Salem, New Hampshire storage unit,” the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. “After obtaining a federal search warrant for the unit, authorities entered and found Neves Valente deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
Salem, NH – December 19: The Extra Space Storage facility on December 19, 2025, the day after the Brown University shooting suspect was found dead there.
Dylan L. Ryan | Boston Globe | Getty Images
Neves Valente had been a PhD program student in physics at Brown.
He is believed to have attended the same university in Lisbon, Portugal, as Loureiro, who was a member of MIT’s departments of nuclear science and engineering and physics.
Neves Valente is the “individual we believe responsible for the Brown shooting,” FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Ted Docks said at a press conference in Providence.
“Many questions need to be answered,” said Docks.
Authorities did not disclose a motive for the slayings.
Authorities believe Neves Valente acted alone and that he eluded capture for days because he was traveling in a rental car whose license plates he kept changing.
But authorities managed to track the rental, which was originally made in Boston, and were able to identify Neves Valente through that, and to learn that he had rented the storage unit in Salem where he was found.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said, “It is safe to assume that this man, when he was a student, spent a lot of time in that building,” Barus & Holley, where Saturday’s shooting occurred.
The last class Neves Valente took at Brown was in 2001 before going on a leave of absence.
Authorities said he is believed to have originally been in the United States on a student visa and obtained lawful permanent resident status in 2017.
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