Claudio Neves Valente accused of shooting at Brown University found dead

A suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University has been found dead in a storage facility in New Hampshire.

Six days after the deadly attack, a manhunt that involved several US states and a $50,000 reward, police swarmed the location in the town of Salem on Thursday night.

Claudio Neves Valente was found dead inside from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The Portuguese national has been identified as the gunman behind both the attack at the Providence university and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days later at his Brookline home.

Col. Oscar Perez, Providence police chief, said that as far as investigators know, the 48-year-old acted alone.

Two students – MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, 18, and Ella Cook, 19 – were killed in the attack on the campus, and nine more were wounded.

How the manhunt unfolded

Police credited a Brown University custodian who had multiple encounters with Neves Valente as providing the crucial tip.

‘When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,’ Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said.

After police shared images of a person of interest, the janitor recognized him and posted his suspicions on Reddit, where he was a regular.

Other Reddit users urged him tell the FBI, and the witness confirmed that he did.

But it took days before police say they interviewed him after publicizing a video where Neves Valente appeared to run away from the other man.

The Reddit commenter eventually returned to the forum on Wednesday night to say that he was just interviewed by investigators.

‘Respectfully, I have said all I have to say on the matter to the right people,’ he wrote, adding hope that the person of interest ‘is apprehended soon so the authorities can get to the bottom of this.’

His tip gave investigators a key detail – a Nissan sedan with Florida plates.

That enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.

After leaving Rhode Island for Massachusetts, Providence officials said the suspect stuck a Maine license plate over the rental car’s to help hide his identity.

Footage then showed Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s.

US attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said that about an hour later, he was seen entering the storage facility where he was found dead.

Meanwhile, Neronha said there are still ‘a lot of unknowns’ in regard to the motive, adding: ‘We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom.’

What we know about the suspect

The investigation had shifted on Thursday when authorities said they were looking into a connection between the Brown attack and the fatal shooting of 47-year-old MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro.

Brown University president Christina Paxson confirmed Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.

He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000.

‘He has no current affiliation with the university,’ she added.

Neves Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said.

Loureiro had graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Technico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page.

The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the university in Lisbon, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.

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