PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — Saturday marked one week since a deadly mass shooting at Brown University’s Barus and Holley Building, where two students were killed. With the shooter now dead, investigators have pieced together a timeline of the shooting and the multistate manhunt that followed. T he shooting happened Saturday, Dec. 20, shortly after 4 p.m., when officials say 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente opened fire inside a classroom during a study session. Ten students were shot — Nineteen-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman Mukhammad-Aziz Umurzokov were killed. “Sadly, today is the day that the city of Providence, the state of Rhode Island, prayed would never come,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said later that evening. The shooting sent Providence’s East Side into turmoil. Streets were shut down as first responders worked to treat the injured while police searched for the suspect. Brown University was placed on lockdown. Around 8 p.m., Smiley confirmed there were two individuals who had died, saying there were another eight in critical status, though stable at Rhode Island Hospital. Police later clarified that the suspect had not interacted with officers when leaving the building. When asked whether police had seen the suspect exit, Providence Police Commander Timothy O’Hara said there was “no interaction with that suspect with police,” adding the description “was from an eyewitness account.” Footage later revealed that the suspect walked directly past Brown University security officers arriving on scene just minutes after the shots were fired. Much of the East Side remained under a shelter-in-place order overnight as snow fell and the neighborhood grew quiet. Hours later, police activity shifted miles away to the Coventry-Warwick Hampton Inn. Guest Karen Gardner said she was awakened by officers banging on the door across the hall. In an interview with ABC6, she said she looked out of her hotel room and saw police. “I just figured it was some ruckus going on,” Gardner said. She later learned police had taken a person of interest into custody. Law enforcement sources said the man had two guns with him at the hotel, including one matching witness descriptions of a gun used in the Brown shooting. But Sunday night, officials announced the person they had taken into custody was being released. “It was actually picked up by the FBI, and they followed through with it, and they ended up coming and locating this individual of interest,” Providence Police Col. Oscar Perez said. “At that point, we did a thorough investigation, examined, ended up drafting some search warrants, came up with some evidence.” “But that evidence was examined, and we didn’t have enough obviously, to be able to prosecute anybody,” Perez continued. “So the person was released.” Hours after that release, authorities said 47-year-old MIT professor Nuno Loureiro was murdered in his Brookline, Massachusetts, home. Investigators did not immediately connect the cases but later determined Neves Valente was responsible for both shootings. Police said Neves Valente traveled from Providence to Brookline in a rental car to kill Loureiro, whom he knew from a school in Portugal. Investigators also learned Neves Valente was a former Brown graduate student who had taken physics classes in the Barus and Holley Building. A major break in the case came Wednesday when police released new images of a man seen near the suspect before the shooting. Authorities later said the individual in those images, identified only as “John,” confronted Neves Valente shortly before the shooting. Police said “John” was a former Brown student who sometimes stayed in the basement of the Barus and Holley Building. Investigators said he later posted on Reddit about a suspicious person driving a vehicle with Florida license plates. “When we brought him in, he collaborated further on that vehicle. We put it out through FLOC, the description of it,” Perez said. “And we learned that within that time period, there was only a certain amount of vehicles that came up with those descriptions fit in it. So our detectives obviously stayed on that and ended up finding this vehicle with Florida plates.” Investigators said Neves Valente switched license plates and used technology to prevent his phone from being tracked as he traveled between Providence and Brookline. Law enforcement eventually traced him to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, Thursday night, where they discovered he had killed himself earlier in the week. “Ballistics evidence now matches him to both shootings, both in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and DNA evidence matches him to Rhode Island,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. According to ABC News, investigators are now reviewing thumb drives found with Neves Valente’s body in hopes of learning why he carried out the attacks. Categories: News, Providence, Rhode Island ...read more read less