Found dead in a storage facility
The chief suspect in a shooting that prompted a six-day manhunt across multiple U.S. states
An individual was identified as Claudio Neves Valenti. Date of birth, and he was a 48-year-old man
He was a brown student. He was a Portuguese national. And his last known address was in Miami, Florida
And I will tell you that he took his own life tonight. Police cordoned off the area around Brown University, Rhode Island on December 13th
after two students were shot dead and another nine injured. Students were moved to another location, the campus locked down, and investigations began
Valente had studied for a doctorate in physics at the prestigious Ivy League institution around 25 years ago
Investigators also believe he killed a professor, Nuno Lorero, at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology two days later in a suburb of Boston 80 kilometres north. The two men had
been classmates in Portugal more than two decades ago before Valente travelled to the US to continue his academic career As the manhunt intensified police released CCTV footage of the chief suspect
his face covered by a surgical mask. As the suspect's death was announced
the Homeland Security Secretary, Cristi Noem, announced she was suspending the visa programme
under which Valente entered the U.S. in 2017. According to the State Department
the so-called Green Card Lottery, grants up to 55,000 permanent resident visas every year
to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S
Immediately following Professor Luriero's murder, Nives Valente drove to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire
where he had rented a storage unit in November of this year. Now, when investigators went into the storage facility tonight to execute the federal search warrant
he was dead. Investigators say Valente had used a mobile phone that was harder to track
and had not used credit cards linked to his name, making him more difficult to trace
Officials also said he had switched the number plates on his rental car to avoid being caught
Charles Stratford, Al Jazeera