Providence police identified the suspect in the Brown University shooting as Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, a 48-year-old former Brown student and Portuguese national who later took his own life Thursday night in New Hampshire.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said Valente's last known address was Miami. He was not an active student, having withdrawn from Brown in 2003.
Neves-Valente was found dead with two firearms, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said.
Neronha said that an eyewitness "led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photographs of that individual renting the car, which matched the clothing of our shooter here in Providence that matched the satchel that we see here in Providence.
"He was found dead with a satchel with two firearms and evidence in the car that that matches exactly what we see at the scene here in Providence," Neronha added.
Perez said video evidence gave investigators a description of the vehicle, which was then analyzed using police software and traced to a rental car agency in Massachusetts.
The suspect was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility.
Investigators believe the man is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who was fatally shot in his Brookline home Monday, the official said. MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was gunned down in his home Monday night in the Boston suburb of Brookline. The 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist died at a hospital the next day.
However, law enforcement did not connect Neves-Valente to Loureiro's shooting death during Thursday's press conference.
Valente on Saturday killed two students and wounded nine others in a classroom in the school's engineering building before getting away.
Authorities scoured the area for evidence and pleaded with the public to check any phone or security footage they might have from the week before the attack, believing the shooter might have cased the scene ahead of time.
Investigators released several videos from the hours and minutes before and after the shooting that show a person who, according to police, matches witnesses' description of the shooter.
In the clips, the person is standing, walking and even running along streets just off campus, but always with a mask on or their head turned.
Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras.
And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.
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