University shooting suspect found dead

The suspect in the deadly shooting at Brown University in the US has been found dead.

Two students were killed and nine were injured during the shooting inside a classroom building at the Ivy League university in Providence, Rhode Island, on Saturday. Speaking at a news conference on Thursday night in Providence, police said the suspect had been found dead.

He is a 48-year-old Portuguese man called Claudio Manuel Nueves Valente whose last known address was in Miami, Florida, Providence Police chief Oscar Perez said. Nueves Valente was found dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, seemingly from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

"He may have been dead for a bit of time," said one senior official. Nueves Valente was a former PhD student in physics at Brown from 2000 until the spring of 2001, when he took a leave of absence before formally withdrawing effective July 2003, according to Brown University president Christina Paxson.

She said that as a physics student, Nueves Valente would have spent "a great deal of time" in the building where the shooting took place for classes. Nueves Valente was found after a tip with a description of a car led detectives to a car rental company in Massachusetts, Mr Perez said.

CCTV footage and a document from the rental company provided the suspect's real name. Rhode Island's attorney general Peter Neronha said the suspect was found "with a satchel, with two firearms and evidence in the car that matches exactly what we see at the scene here in Providence".

Mr Neronha revealed that a person who approached two police officers with relevant information played a crucial role in identifying the suspect. "He blew this case right open.

He blew it open," Mr Neronha said. "That person 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." Police said earlier that they were also investigating a possible link between the suspect and the murder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Nuno Loureiro, 47, two days later in a town 50 miles north of Boston.

Federal officials confirmed the link in the news conference, as they announced the death of the "Brown University and MIT professor shooter". They added that there was "no longer a threat to the public".

Nueves Valente attended the same Portuguese university as Mr Loureiro, who was found dead with gunshot wounds on Monday evening. "It is believed that in Lisbon that those two individuals attended the same university in Portugal," a federal agent said.

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