Federal authorities are continuing their investigation into the tragic mass shooting from December that claimed the lives of two Brown University students and a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while additionally injuring nine others.
On Tuesday, a video transcript was made public, reportedly recorded by Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the individual linked to the shooting at Brown University and the murder of the MIT physicist.
Ella Cook, 19, and Mohammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, were among the fatalities in the December 13 incident at the Providence, Rhode Island campus. Just two days later, MIT professor Nuno Loureiro lost his life in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Latest updates indicate that eight of the injured students have since been discharged from hospitals, although one remains hospitalized.
Investigators executed a federal search warrant on December 18 at a storage unit associated with Neves Valente, a Portuguese national. The FBI collected several electronic devices that contained multiple short videos filmed after the shooting. Translations of these videos from Portuguese to English were also released recently.
In these recordings, Neves Valente purportedly confessed to planning the attack for an extended period and labeled Brown as his primary target. However, authorities have not revealed his specific motivations for targeting either Brown students or MIT faculty.
Authorities noted that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is tracing the firearm used in the shooting, but details regarding the weapon’s origin or purchase details remain undisclosed. Efforts to obtain comments from the FBI continue.
Josh Szilard, a former tactical emergency response director with experience from the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, mentioned that while the shooter acknowledged responsibility for the attack, little clarity has emerged about the reasoning behind it. Szilard noted that the shooter ruled out ideological reasons and denied any mental illness.
He indicated that the shooter expressed some difficulty in taking lives and ironically envied those who seemed to manage it without hesitation.
Authorities have confirmed that Neves Valente died by suicide two days before his body was located in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire. They also emphasized that they do not believe there is an ongoing threat to public safety stemming from the shooting, and further information will be shared as it becomes available.
