Brown University Shooting Linked to Killing of MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro

On December 13, 2025, at approximately 4:00 p.m. EST, during a student review session, a gunman began shooting in Room 166 of the Barus & Holley engineering building at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Two people, Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, were killed in the attack, and nine others were transported to hospital with injuries, according to police.

Cook and Umurzokov were both undergraduate students at Brown University.

Umurzokov was a naturalized citizen originally from Uzbekistan and a first-year student residing in Midlothian, Virginia. His sister described him as funny, kind, and smart.

Cook was a sophomore from Alabama and vice president of Brown’s chapter of College Republicans of America. She was described by her peers as kindhearted, brave, and bold.

Police said the suspect opened fire on students at around 4 p.m. The shooting lasted approximately two minutes before he walked away from the scene, triggering a nationwide manhunt.

Two days later, on December 15, 2025, 47-year-old MIT physics professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was found gravely injured from a gunshot wound in his home on Gibbs Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, authorities said.

Loureiro was internationally recognized for his work in plasma and fusion physics.

Born in 1977 in the small city of Viseu in central Portugal, Loureiro had aspired to be a scientist since childhood. He earned an undergraduate degree in physics at Instituto Superior Técnico and a PhD in physics from Imperial College London.

While in London, he developed a passion for plasma physics and went on to work at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the UKAEA Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. In 2009, he returned to Portugal to work at IST Lisbon’s Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion before taking a position at MIT in 2016.

After police discovered him in his apartment, Loureiro was transported to a nearby hospital, where he died the following day from his injuries.

According to investigators, surveillance captured a gray rental Nissan with Florida plates near the scene of the Brown University shooting.

The vehicle was later seen traveling through Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, police said.

Authorities said Valente changed the rental car’s license plates after the shooting to evade police.

Investigators canvassed streets near the university for civilian footage and constructed a timeline of events. After questioning and clearing one suspect, they were able to identify an eyewitness who had been in the vicinity of the alleged shooter on December 13.

The witness identified the suspect’s rental vehicle, allowing detectives to track it to Brookline.

Police said they received a tip through the tip command center directing them to a Reddit post made to the Providence subreddit by a throwaway account. The user said they had seen the suspect walking in the area.

Media outlets reported that the post said:

"The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving. It was parked in front of the little shack behind the Rhode Island Historical Society on the Cooke St. side. I know because he used his key fob to open the car, approached it, and then something prompted him to back away. When he backed away, he relocked the car. I found that odd, so when he circled the block I approached the car. That is when I saw the Florida plates.”

On December 15, the FBI released a poster seeking information on a suspect in the Brown University shooting, offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the individual’s identification, arrest, and conviction.

The poster featured three photographs of a masked man dressed in dark clothing, wearing a hat and a black face mask.

Leah Foley, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said surveillance footage showed Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s Brookline home on the day of the murder.

About an hour later, footage showed Valente entering a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where authorities said he later took his own life with a gun.

On December 18, Massachusetts State Police announced that Loureiro’s murder was connected to the mass shooting at Brown University.

That same day, the body of a male was discovered in a storage unit in Salem. Police said the man appeared to have died by suicide.

Two firearms were found inside the unit. Ballistics linked one weapon to the Brown University shooting and the other to the murder of Professor Loureiro.

An autopsy identified the suspect as Claudio Valente. Police also confirmed that the gray Nissan captured on surveillance was linked to him.

Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, was born in Torres Novas, Portugal. In the 1990s, he studied engineering physics at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon before entering the physics PhD program at Brown University in early 2000.

He took a leave in 2001 and left the program in the summer of 2003 without obtaining a degree. He had studied alongside Professor Loureiro.

In 2017, authorities said, Valente received a green card through the Diversity Visa lottery and became a lawful permanent resident of the United States, living in Miami, Florida, for a time.

At a press conference, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said, “We are 100 percent confident that this is our target and that this case is closed from a perspective of pursuing people involved.”

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Valente, who attended Brown for about a year in the early 2000s, likely “spent a lot of time” in the Barus and Holley building where the shooting occurred.

Investigators have not identified a motive for the mass shooting or the murder.

Why he carried out the attacks remains unknown.

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