Brown University Shooting Suspect Found Dead Inside Storage Unit Following Manhunt

A suspect in the Brown University shooting that left an MIT professor dead was found in New Hampshire on Dec. 18, 2025. The suspect's body was reportedly found inside a storage unit, per ABC News.

The killer allegedly shot and killed two students and wounded nine more people in a shooting at Brown University in Providence, R.I., on Dec. 13. On Dec. 15, the killer allegedly murdered the MIT professor in Brookline, Mass. A manhunt for the killer went on for several days until a Reddit post reportedly led to his whereabouts, according to The New York Times.

Brown University students Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov were killed during the mass shooting, and nine more were wounded after the shooter opened fire. Two days later, MIT physics professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was shot to death in his home in Massachusetts, according to the Providence Police Department.

Investigators received a tip on Dec. 16 that a post on Reddit post referenced details about the shootings. The person who wrote the post claimed they had seen the suspect prior to the shooting.

"I'm being dead serious," read the post. "The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving. It was parked in front of the little shack behind the Rhode Island Historical Society on the Cooke St side. I know because he used his key fob to open the car, approached it, and then something prompted him to back away. When he backed away, he relocked the car."

"I found that odd, so when he circled the block, I approached the car, and that is when I saw the Florida plates. He was parked in the section between the gate of the RIHS and the corner of Cooke and George St."

The suspect is 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente. Claudio was born in Torres Novas, Santarem, Portugal, and he came to the U.S. back in 2000 as a graduate student at Brown under an F-1 visa. The U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Leah Foley, said that Claudio and the MIT professor went through the same academic program at the college from 1995 to 2000 at a Portuguese University, per NPR.

The authorities found Claudio in Salem, R.I., by using surveillance video and license-plate reader technology to track the rental car to a car rental agency in Massachusetts. They later found the Portuguese native inside the storage unit dead from what they said was a suicide. The police also said that two firearms were found with Claudio, as well as evidence that matched the Brown University crime scene.

The authorities are still investigating the mass shootings at Brown University and the murder in Massachusetts, and no motive for the murders has yet been released.