The suspect in the murder of two Brown University students and an MIT professor planned the school attack for years, according to a press release issued Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The shooter, 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, killed students Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzoko in the Dec. 13 attack. Nine other students were also injured. Two days later, he killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline.
The shooter was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a New Hampshire storage facility on Dec. 18. Justice Department officials said during the search of the storage facility, the FBI recovered an electronic device containing a series of four videos made by the shooter after the shootings.
Motives Remain Unclear in Brown, MIT Shootings
Transcripts from the videos, translated from Portuguese to English by officials, offer no clear motives for the shootings. The shooter refused to explain his reasoning, saying he had “absolutely no patience” and was “not going to give you the right to that.”
“Even though I would have a lot to say and write, I don’t care,” he continued.
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The shooter said he felt he had nothing to apologize for because “during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me.” He also said his only regret was an eye injury he sustained from a shell round.
“[The shooter] showed no remorse during the recordings; on the contrary, he exposed his true nature when he blamed innocent, unarmed children for their deaths at his hand and grumbled about a self-inflicted injury he suffered when he shot the MIT professor at close range,” the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in its release.
Brown University Shooter Videos Detail Attack
The gunman admitted he had been planning the shooting for over six semesters, noting he had “plenty of opportunities” to target Brown sooner but that he had “always chickened out.” A confrontation with an individual on campus was ultimately the “catalyst” to carry out the attacks, he said. He did not specify what prompted him to murder Loureiro, with whom he attended a Portuguese university decades ago.
The shooter said the attack did not go as planned as he initially wanted to target a “regular room” rather than an auditorium. He opened fire at the end of a final review session for an economics class in the Barus and Holley building.
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The shooter initially said that he did not recall saying anything upon entering the auditorium, but later said he “must have made an exclamation like ‘Oh no!'” to “express that it was empty.” He then goes on to mock the victims, calling them “stupid” for hiding under tables and chairs instead of running to an emergency exit “on the lower right side.”
Previous reports indicate the gunman opened fire from the back of the auditorium. Witnesses said the shooter entered from the back of the auditorium and walked down it as he fired across and toward the front of the space.
He shooter also refuted allegations that he shouted “Allah Akbar,” an Arabic phrase meaning “God is greatest,” during the attack.
