The suspect in the killings at Brown University was identified as a 48-year-old Portuguese national who was a student at the school who, police said during a Thursday night media briefing, was found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha confirmed that the individual was found deceased after an arrest warrant was issued for him.
The Washington Post reported that, after a five-day manhunt, the alleged perpetrator, identified as Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, was tracked to an Extra Space Storage in Salem, New Hampshire, about 80 miles north of Providence, Rhode Island, where the shootings occurred.
Neves-Valente is not a U.S. citizen.
“Each individual in this country deserves to live in peace and security in their homes, in their schools, in their places of worship, and in the streets,” said Thomas Greco, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives special agent in charge of the Boston Field Division.
“The actions of Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente stole that right and terrorized a community.”
Officials also said Neves-Valente was implicated in the killing of Nuno Loureiro, a prominent 47-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology nuclear fusion professor who was killed two days after the Brown attack at his home.
“According to records from Instituto Superior Técnico (I.S.T.), the preeminent Portuguese engineering school, a person named Claudio Neves-Valente was terminated from a monitor position in February of 2000, the same year that Loureiro graduated from I.S.T.,” Vanity Fair reported.
The death of Neves-Valente brings to a close a tumultuous week in which both local and federal law enforcement came under scrutiny for their handling of the shooting deaths.
Around 4 p.m. Saturday, a man dressed in black with his face covered entered a study session at the Ivy League school, shouted something authorities say was unintelligible, and opened fire, leaving two persons dead.
In the immediate aftermath, video was scant and authorities were less than forthcoming with information, including refusing to answer whether or not the suspect had yelled “Allahu Akbar” before the shooting or whether a Palestinian activist on Brown’s campus was a suspect. A person of interest was identified and taken into custody, but then released after authorities determined he was not the killer.
However, law enforcement officials assured Providence that they were not in danger. Two days after the Brown shooting, Loureiro was also shot multiple times at his home. He died Tuesday morning.
Law enforcement authorities linked the two shootings days later after officials noted the similarities in the murders.
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