PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Authorities have identified the suspect behind Saturday’s tragic shooting at Brown University, which resulted in the deaths of two students and injuries to nine others during a study session for finals. The individual is also suspected of murdering a prominent nuclear scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a few days later.

Providence police have named the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente.

On Thursday evening, officials announced that Neves-Valente was found deceased. This development followed a significant law enforcement presence, with officers in tactical gear spending several hours outside a storage unit connected to him in Salem, New Hampshire.

Neves-Valente, aged 48, was a Portuguese national who attended Brown University from the fall of 2000 until the spring of 2001, focusing on physics. However, according to Brown President Christina Paxson, he took a leave of absence and eventually withdrew from the university in 2003.

An image released by the Providence Police Department shows Claudio Neves-Valente, identified as the gunman at Brown University, wearing a jacket matching one seen on a man previously identified as a person of interest in the case.

A man with the same name was also terminated from a monitor position at the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Portugal in 2000, school records show. Authorities said they believe he is the same person as the killer. 

That’s also the same university attended by the renowned MIT nuclear physics professor Nuno Loureiro, who suffered fatal gunshot wounds Monday at his home in Massachusetts, about 50 miles away from Brown.

Images of Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente displayed on a projector screen at a news briefing in Providence, Rhode Island. The 48-year-old former student and Portuguese national has been identified as the gunman behind a mass shooting that killed two students and wounded nine Saturday.  (Andrea Margolis/Fox News Digital)

Rhode Island authorities said that investigation was being handled by Massachusetts authorities, who would speak for themselves. Leah B. Foley, the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, later confirmed that Neves-Valente was suspected in Loureiro’s murder too.

“This evening at approximately 9 p.m., federal agents breached a storage locker in Salem, New Hampshire, in search of Claudio Neves-Valente, a Portuguese national we believed shot and killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor in Brookline, Massachusetts,” she told reporters in a separate news briefing. “Federal agents found Neves-Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

The Brown shooting happened around 4 p.m. Saturday at a finals week study session at the Barus and Holley Building on the eastern edge of campus. A motive remains unclear, and the investigation is ongoing, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters.

A split image showing multiple still frames from the surveillance video taken near Brown University of a person of interest before and after a school shooting Saturday. (FBI Boston)

The building has long hosted physics and engineering classes, according to Paxson. 

“I think it’s safe to assume that this man, when he was a student, spent a great deal of time in that building for classes and other activities as a Ph.D. student in physics,” Paxson said. “He has no current active affiliation with the university or campus presence.”

Interior view of Barus and Holley Room 166 on the campus of Brown University in Providence, R.I. On Saturday, Dec. 13, around 4p.m., a masked man with a gun entered a review session in Barus & Holley Room 166 for ECON 0110: “Principles of Economics,” shouted something indiscernible and opened fire. (Kenna Lee/The Brown Daily Herald)

Detectives initially questioned a person of interest at a hotel outside town but ruled him out as a suspect, according to authorities.

Police spent days canvassing the neighborhood for surveillance video, which turned up images of a person of interest — a masked, stocky figure who stood around 5 feet, 8 inches tall and walked with an odd gait.

Susan Constantine, a body language expert, said one key marker is how the person of interest’s right leg bows inward while his toe points outward as he walks.

Then they shared images of a second person who they said may have information about the person they were seeking and asked for the public’s help identifying both of them.

Six of the surviving victims remained hospitalized as of Thursday afternoon in stable condition.

Members of the FBI Evidence Response Team search for evidence near the campus of Brown University, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)

The two killed were identified as Ella Cook of Alabama and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov of Virginia.

The surrounding community spent days waiting for answers, with residents on edge after the school sent students home early in the wake of the shooting.