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Claudio Neves Valente: Did Brown shooting suspect murder MIT prof Nuno Loureiro? First details emerge
Claudio Neves Valente was identified as the Brown University shooting suspect on Thursday
Claudio Neves Valente was identified as the Brown University shooting suspect on Thursday. In a press conference, officials revealed that the 48-year-old died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was found in a New Hampshire storage facility.
Reuters reported that it is believed that Valente's body was discovered in a storage unit in Salem, about 20 miles (30 km) north of downtown Boston. A DOJ official told the agency that the suspected shooter had killed himself.
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Meanwhile, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said that it is still unclear why Valente targeted Brown University.
“I don’t think we have any idea why now or why? Why Brown? Why these students? Why this classroom? That is really unknown to us and it may become clear,” he said. “I hope that it does, but it hasn’t as of right now.”
Did Claudio Neves Valente murder MIT professor Nuno Loureiro?
The Associated Press cited a law enforcement official to report that investigators believe Valente is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno Loureiro, in his Brookline home. Authorities have not formally confirmed a connection between the two shootings.
Brown University President Christina Paxson later disclosed that Valente had briefly attended the school in 2000 as a graduate student in physics. During that time, his coursework would have been limited to the Barus and Holley engineering complex, the same building where the mass shooting later unfolded.
Read More: ‘What’s the motive': Brown shooting suspect Claudio Neves Valente's Portugal link sparks concerns
As per a Vanity Fair report, records from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Portugal’s leading engineering university, show that an individual named Claudio Neves-Valente was dismissed from a monitor role in February 2000. That dismissal occurred in the same year MIT professor Nuno Loureiro completed his studies at the institution.
