‘What’s the motive': Brown shooting suspect Claudio Neves Valente's Portugal link sparks concerns

Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente was identified as the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting that killed two and wounded several others, officials said. The 48-year-old was found dead in a Salem, New Hampshire storage facility, officials said.

Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said at a news conference that Neves-Valente died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was a Portuguese national and a Brown student.

Investigators believe Valente is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who was fatally shot in his Brookline home Monday, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Authorities have not formally confirmed a connection between the two shootings.

Authorities are yet to confirm why Claudio Neves Valente shot at students at Brown University last weekend. However, social media users expressed concerns around his Portugal link.

“Why did this Brown shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, kill Ella Cook, my College Republicans VP, Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a freshman foreign student, and Nuno Loureiro, a MIT professor working on cutting edge nuclear tech? None of this makes sense. When will we get a motive?” one person wrote on X, platform formerly known as Twitter.

“So it appears that the Brown shooter was a disgruntled former student, Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente had no political motive, the right wing that all jumped the gun saying it was politically motivated should be ashamed of themselves,” another person tweeted.

Meanwhile, Brown President said that Valente had attended the school in 2000 as a graduate student in physics. At the time, his academic work would have been confined to the Barus and Holley engineering complex, the very site where the mass shooting would later take place.

The Vanity Fair cited documents from Instituto Superior Técnico (I.S.T.) to report that a person identified as Claudio Neves-Valente was removed from a monitor position in February 2000, the same year MIT professor Nuno Loureiro graduated from the institution.

HT.com cannot verify these claims at the moment. Officials are yet to make a statement on the suspect's potential motive.

It has been nearly a week since the shooting at Brown. Frustration mounted in Providence that the person behind the attack managed to get away and that a clear image of their face hadn't emerged.

A second individual who was identified in proximity to the suspect came forward after Wednesday’s press conference and helped “blow the lid” off the case, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said.

“When you crack it, you crack it. That person led us to the car, led us to the name," Neronha said.

(With AP inputs)

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