The man who committed the mass shooting at Brown University in December had been planning the attack for years, according to the FBI.
In a series of audio files and short videos he created before he took his own life, Claudio Neves Valente said he began planning the attack at Brown in 2022, the FBI said in a statement Wednesday. That’s when he acquired the storage unit in New Hampshire at which he ultimately died.
“He considered, planned and prepared for the mass shooting at Brown University in increments over a period of several years in isolation, spanning multiple geographic locations,” the FBI statement said.
The Bureau also says Neves Valente was so socially isolated that there was little opportunity for someone to warn law enforcement.
“The shooter lacked traditional support, such as family, peers and authority figures, who would have been able to observe any potential warning signs and contact law enforcement,” the FBI statement said.
The Bureau says Neves Valente acted alone and that investigators found no links to terrorism.
The roughly two-page statement from the FBI outlines a months-long investigation into the shooting that it says is still ongoing. The Bureau stressed it found no evidence of ongoing public safety threats related to the shooting.
Ella Cook, a Brown sophomore, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a freshman, were killed during a final exam review session in the Barus & Holley building on Dec. 13, 2025. Nine others were wounded and survived the attack.
The FBI investigation determined that the shooter legally purchased the gun used in the attack in Providence and a second gun that appears to have been used to kill MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro two days after the Brown campus shooting.
