Brown University Shooting: Reddit Tip Helped Police Identify and Track Suspect

According to the investigators, a vital hint connected to a Reddit post was instrumental in allowing US officials to promptly detect and follow the gunman responsible for the fatal shooting on the Brown University campus.

The 48-year-old Portuguese national and ex-Brown University graduate student, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who was the suspect, was subsequently discovered dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, from what seemed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Law enforcement assumes he was also the perpetrator of the murder of the physicist who had just been shot near Boston a few days ago.

Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez said Neves Valente acted alone “as far as we know” and that his last known address was in Miami. Investigators confirmed that the suspect died by suicide.

How a Reddit post broke the case

The five-day investigation saw a major breakthrough on December 16, when police received an anonymous tip pointing them to a Reddit post. The post urged authorities to investigate a grey Nissan with Florida licence plates that had been seen repeatedly near Brown University’s campus.

Using that information, along with witness statements and surveillance footage, police were able to confirm that the vehicle was a rental car from a Boston-based Alamo agency and was linked to Neves Valente, according to an affidavit filed by the Providence Police Department.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said the Reddit tip “blew this case wide open,” allowing investigators to rapidly narrow their search.

Timeline of the attacks

Neves, who goes by the name Valente, reportedly opened fire at Brown University on December 13, killing two and injuring nine before he fled to the sea.

Two days later, on December 15, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old professor of physics at MIT, was shot and killed in his Brookline, MA, residence and was then declared dead at the hospital. Initially, the police stated that the two incidents were not related; however, a few days later, the detectives announced that it was a fact that Neves Valente had done both of them.

Neves Valente and Loureiro are believed to have been in the same college in Portugal from 1995 to 2000.

Investigation details

During the search, police released images of a masked individual seen near the Brown campus. Shortly after, a man identified in court documents as “John” contacted authorities and identified himself as the Reddit user who had shared details about the suspect and the vehicle.

According to the affidavit, John encountered the suspect inside a campus building hours before the shooting and later observed him circling the area near the grey Nissan. A university custodian also reported seeing a suspicious individual matching the suspect’s description on multiple occasions in the same building days earlier.

Investigators later determined that Neves Valente fled Rhode Island for Massachusetts and may have changed the licence plate on his rental vehicle to avoid detection. Surveillance footage placed him near the MIT professor’s residence and later at the storage facility in Salem, where his body was found.

Autopsy findings and unanswered questions

The New Hampshire chief medical examiner performed an autopsy, which verified that Neves Valente had committed suicide with a gunshot wound to the head. It is thought that he died on December 16, the day following the MIT shooting.

Even though the suspect was identified, the police stated that there were still a lot of questions, such as the reason for the shootings, that had to be answered.

“Even though the suspect was found dead, our work is not done,” said Ted Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston. “There are many questions that still need answers.”