As the manhunt continues into Saturday’s murderous shooting at Brown University, a veteran journalist on Tuesday put new light on one possible angle.
Mark Halperin, an author, perceptive commentator, and former political director for ABC News, cited “sources” he’s spoken to that have told him that the family of Ella Cook, one of the two deceased victims, has been told she was a target in the attack.
While stressing he could not vouch for the veracity of the report, Halperin said that “if it’s true that she was targeted, that’s a big story, because she was one of the most visible conservatives on that campus.”
Mark Halperin
People are telling me that the Brown University attack was targeting Ella Cook a prominent conservative on campus. pic.twitter.com/ewmiKsELD4— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) December 15, 2025
Cook, 19, of Birmingham, Alabama, was the vice president of the Brown University College Republicans.
The second victim who died was MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old Brown student from Uzbekistan, according to WFXT-TV in Boston.
Nine other students were wounded in the shooting, which took place at the school’s Barus and Holley Building, which holds the school’s engineering and physics departments, according to The New York Times.
Halperin made his comments Monday on his “The Morning Meeting” podcast on the 2WAY digital media platform.
On Tuesday, authorities released a video of the gunman seen from various cameras around the Providence, Rhode Island, campus.
BREAKING: FBI have just released a new video showing the timeline of movements of the alleged Brown University shooter
Some clips show the shooter was able to simply WALK PASSED responding Providence PD after the shooting
Where is the dash/body cam footage @ProvidenceRIPD?! pic.twitter.com/aQlAvMBS2i
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 16, 2025
With the killer still at large and his motive unclear (a “person of interest” originally detained was eventually released), there’s no way at this point to prove or disprove Halperin’s report from his sources.
Amber Duke, senior editor of The Daily Caller, noted to Halperin that the gunman’s behavior appeared more in line with the perpetrator of a targeted shooting than a mass killer who was shooting victims at random, according to Mediaite.
“Typically, when we see mass school shooters, they don’t just stop and walk away, right?” she said.
“Usually, they keep going until they’re apprehended by police, shot dead, or they kill themselves,” Duke added.
“And the other thing is if the police are telling Brown students that they are safe, they don’t have to shelter in place anymore, but they don’t have a suspect in custody, I think that also suggests that this was some kind of targeted attack.”
She also noted that in her experience as a conservative at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she was chairwoman of the College Republicans club, she had received “multiple threats.”
The whole segment can be viewed below:
“And it seems to me that the political violence problem has only gotten worse in the 10 years since,” she said.
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