Investigators on Friday tried to sort out why a former Brown University student allegedly opened fire on the campus decades after he dropped out and later gunned down an esteemed Massachusetts college professor he attended school with in Portugal in the 1990s.
Claudio Neves Valente, who, like Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, was a Portuguese national living in the U.S., was found dead Thursday night from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Providence's police chief, Col. Oscar Perez.
An autopsy confirmedΒ Neves Valente died Tuesday, the same day asΒ Loureiro.Β
This image shows a surveillance image of Claudio Neves Valente, a suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University.Β
The discovery of the 48-year-old Neves Valente's body at a New Hampshire storage facility ended the almost weeklong hunt for the person who killed two students and wounded nine others in a Brown lecture hall last Saturday.
Investigators believe the onetime Brown student killed Loureiro in his home in Brookline, a Boston suburb about 50 miles north of Providence, on Monday. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone.
Portugal's foreign minister, Paulo Rangel, said Friday the government was taken aback by revelations that a Portuguese man is the main suspect in the mass shooting at Brown and the killing of Loureiro. Police in Portugal said they were contacted by U.S. authorities Thursday once Neves Valente was named.
Rangel said Portugal has provided "very broad cooperation" in the case. He said in comments to the national news agency Lusa that "the investigation is far from over."
Law enforcement officers are seen ThursdayΒ outside a storage facility where a suspect in the shooting at Brown University was found dead in Salem, N.H.Β
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled there as a graduate student studying physics from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.
"He has no current affiliation with the university," she said.
Neves Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said.
Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior TΓ©cnico, Portugal's premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. That same year, Neves Valente was let go from his temporary student support and faculty liaison position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school's president at the time.
Pedestrians walkΒ Wednesday at the intersection of Waterman St. and Brook St. in Providence, R.I.
Neves Valente, who was born in Torres Novas, Portugal, came to Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent resident status in September 2017, Foley said. It wasn't immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
After officials revealed the suspect's identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to stay in the United States.
There are still "a lot of unknowns" in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. "We don't know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom," he said.
Tip helps investigators
The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.
Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente for providing a crucial tip that led authorities to him.
This image shows a surveillance image of Claudio Neves Valente, a suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University.Β
After police shared security video of a person of interest, the witness β known only as "John" in a Providence police affidavit β recognized him and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.
John said he encountered Neves Valente about two hours before the attack in a bathroom in the engineering building, which was where the shooting occurred, and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. He again bumped into Neves Valente before the attack a couple blocks away and saw him suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.
"When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name," Neronha said.
His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by a surveillance company. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.
After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente stuck a Maine license plate over his rental car's plate to help conceal his identity.
Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro's in a Boston suburb. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility where he was found dead, Foley said. He had with him a satchel and two firearms, Neronha said.
