Staff Reports
The suspect in the horrific Brown University attack has been identified and found dead, ending a frantic manhunt but leaving a community shattered and a nation asking why this was allowed to happen. Authorities say the man was Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown student who was discovered dead in a rented storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.
Two students were murdered and multiple others were wounded when the gunman opened fire inside an engineering classroom during finals week, an atrocity that exposed glaring vulnerabilities in campus security and common-sense safety planning. Eyewitnesses and officials described chaos as students tried to flee a room that, disturbingly, had few cameras and easy public access from a residential street.
Just two days after the campus slaughter, authorities say that same suspect allegedly tracked down and murdered MIT physics professor Nuno Loureiro at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, a killing that investigators have linked to the Brown attack. The connection between the two crimes — including the fact the men once attended the same academic program in Portugal — deepens the horror and underscores that mass violence sometimes crosses state lines in chilling ways.
Law enforcement credits a citizen tip and surveillance footage from a rental car for breaking the case, revealing the suspect’s attempts to hide his movements by swapping license plates and using hard-to-track phones. Officers found two firearms with his body and concluded he died of a self-inflicted gunshot, but the motive remains stubbornly unclear even as investigators stitch together the timeline.
This tragedy should reopen a sober national conversation about immigration policy and vetting; federal officials have already moved to pause the Diversity Immigrant Visa program in response to the suspect’s permanent-resident status. If we are serious about protecting American families and our campuses, we must stop reflexively defending policies that make it harder, not easier, to keep dangerous people out.
Beyond borders, universities must be held to account for lax security and the culture that prioritizes ideology over protection. Hundreds of police officers responded in this case, but the reality is simple: students should not have to take finals under a cloud of vulnerability because administrators refused to invest in sensible security measures.
Credit where it’s due — the tipster who recognized suspicious behavior and the coordinated work of local, state, and federal investigators prevented further bloodshed and deserve our gratitude. Still, gratitude is not enough; we need policy changes, accountability from school leaders, and a return to the commonsense priorities of safety, law, and order that protect everyday Americans.
Our hearts are with the families of the victims and with every student who now faces the trauma of this week. Let this awful episode be a turning point: mourn, remember, and then act to secure our campuses, secure our borders, and restore the basic civic responsibility that keeps communities safe.
