{"id":498552,"date":"2026-01-07T09:08:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T09:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/498552\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T09:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T09:08:20","slug":"doj-says-shooter-who-killed-brown-students-mit-professor-planned-attack-for-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/498552\/","title":{"rendered":"DOJ says shooter who killed Brown students, MIT professor planned attack for years"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON (AP) \u2014 The man identified as the shooter who killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor<\/a> planned the attack for years and left behind videos in which he confessed to the murders but gave no motive, according to information released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

Claudio Neves Valente<\/a>, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after he killed two students and wounded nine others in an engineering building on Dec. 13. Two days later he killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

People hold candles during a vigil in Providence, R.I., for those injured or killed in the previous day\u2019s shooting on the campus of Brown University, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo\/Steven Senne, File)<\/p>\n

People hold candles during a vigil in Providence, R.I., for those injured or killed in the previous day\u2019s shooting on the campus of Brown University, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo\/Steven Senne, File)<\/p>\n

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Justice Department officials said Tuesday that during the search of the storage facility where Neves Valente\u2019s body was found<\/a> on Dec. 18, the FBI recovered an electronic device containing a series of short videos made by Neves Valente after the shootings.<\/p>\n

In the recordings, the shooter admitted in Portuguese that he had been working out details for at least six semesters. He did not give a motive for targeting Brown or the professor, with whom he attended school in Portugal decades ago. <\/p>\n

Videos don\u2019t provide motive, but do address misinformation <\/p>\n

In an English-translated transcript provided by the Justice Department, Neves Valente said he felt he had nothing to apologize for. He also complained in the videos about injuring his eye in the shootings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to apologize because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He explicitly addressed baseless claims spread by conservative influencer Laura Loomer after the attack that the Brown shooter had spoken in Arabic, saying something like \u201cAllahu akbar\u201d upon entering the auditorium.<\/p>\n

Neves Valente said he did not speak a word of Arabic or intend to make any kind of statement. If he said anything, he \u201cmust have made an exclamation like, \u2018Oh no!\u2019 or something like that,\u201d to express disappointment that the auditorium appeared to be empty when he entered, he said. Students were hiding under desks, but Neves Valente thought they\u2019d already escaped through an emergency exit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never wanted to do it in an auditorium. I wanted to do it in a regular room,\u201d he said. \u201cI had plenty of opportunities. Especially this semester, I had plenty of opportunities, but I always chickened out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students were shot at random<\/p>\n

He insisted he was not mentally ill. He said he did not want to be famous and the video was not a manifesto.<\/p>\n

Neves Valente said his \u201conly objective was to leave more or less\u201d on his \u201cown terms\u201d and to ensure he \u201cwouldn\u2019t be the one who ended up suffering the most from all this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, that cannot happen. So if you don\u2019t like it, tough luck,\u201d he said. Neves Valente called his execution of the murders \u201ca little incompetent.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A Brown University student walks past a church on the Providence, RI, campus, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo\/ Mark Stockwell)<\/p>\n

A Brown University student walks past a church on the Providence, RI, campus, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo\/ Mark Stockwell)<\/p>\n

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\u201cBut at least something was done,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Neves Valente wounded nine people and killed two students: Sophomore Ella Cook, 19, and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov.<\/p>\n

Two days later, authorities say, Neves Valente fatally shot Loureiro<\/a>. Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior T\u00e9cnico, that country\u2019s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school\u2019s then-president in February 2000.<\/p>\n

In the recording he said he had the storage space where his body was found for about three years. <\/p>\n

Brown University said in a statement Tuesday that \u201cthe gravity of this tragedy continues to weigh heavily on the full Brown University community\u201d and that they continue to mourn the deaths of the two students and pray for the full recovery of those who were injured.<\/p>\n

Shooter describes witness encounter<\/p>\n

Neves Valente mentioned his confrontation with a witness<\/a> at Brown that ultimately led to his identification days later. <\/p>\n

According to police, the witness had several encounters with Neves Valente before the attack<\/a>. As police posted images of the person of interest, the witness began posting on the social media forum Reddit that he recognized the person and theorized that police should look into \u201cpossibly a rental\u201d gray Nissan. Reddit users urged him to inform the FBI, and the witness said he did. <\/p>\n

Until that point, the police affidavit says, officials had not connected a vehicle to the possible shooter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually was confronted,\u201d Neves Valente said about the Brown shooting, adding that the witness saw his license plate. <\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly never thought it would take them so long to find me,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

He said he had no hatred or love for the United States, where he first arrived around 25 years ago to study physics at Brown\u2019s graduate program before leaving in the spring of 2001. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

People depart a funeral service for Brown University shooting victim Ella Cook, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo\/Vasha Hunt)<\/p>\n

People depart a funeral service for Brown University shooting victim Ella Cook, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo\/Vasha Hunt)<\/p>\n

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Neves Valente studied at Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the same thing with Portugal, and most of the places where I have been,\u201d he said, adding later that \u201cI\u2019ve been here without caring for a very long time now.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON (AP) \u2014 The man identified as the shooter who killed two Brown University students and an MIT…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":498553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3881,10762,2731,209305,16720,66465,407,223960,57,4222,51,67722,181121,2739,991,50,124,2737,3677,52,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-498552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-ap-top-news","9":"tag-assault","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-claudio-neves-valente","12":"tag-colleges-and-universities","13":"tag-data-management-and-storage","14":"tag-education","15":"tag-ella-cook","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-gun-violence","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-laura-loomer","20":"tag-local-news-for-apple","21":"tag-massachusetts","22":"tag-new-hampshire","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-portugal","25":"tag-rhode-island","26":"tag-shootings","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-u-s-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115853033931423064","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}