Brown University File photo
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown physics graduate student who briefly attended the Providence institution 25 years ago, took his own life as law enforcement closed in on his location, authorities said. Investigators also linked Valente to the shooting death of an MIT professor two days after the Brown campus attack.
The deceased students were identified as Ella Cook, 19, and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, 18. Nine other students were wounded when Valente opened fire in a first-floor auditorium of the Barus & Holley engineering building on December 14, where students had gathered for an economics course review session ahead of final exams.
"Tonight our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier," Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters at a Thursday evening news conference announcing Valente's death.
Brown University President Dr. Christina Paxson said Valente had enrolled as a Ph.D. student in the university's physics program in 2000 but attended for less than a year before taking a leave of absence and withdrawing. As a physics student, he likely spent considerable time in the engineering building that became the site of the tragedy, Paxson noted.
The case took an unexpected turn when Massachusetts authorities connected Valente to the December 15 shooting death of Dr. Nuno F.G. Loureiro, an MIT professor who was killed in the foyer of his Brookline apartment building. Both Valente and Loureiro were Portuguese natives who studied in the same academic program in Portugal during the 1990s, according to U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley.
"The link began to be established" between the two crimes only within the past day or two, Foley said.
