Brown campus shooter said he plotted attack for ‘six semesters’

BOSTON, Massachusetts - The suspect in last

December’s

shooting at Brown University

and the subsequent killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor said he had planned for “six semesters” before the attack, according to a transcript of video recordings released by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. 

The rampage unfolded on Brown’s campus in Providence, Rhode Island, on Dec 13, when two students were killed and nine others wounded. Days later,

MIT professor Nuno Loureiro was fatally shot in Brookline, Massachusetts

, a Boston suburb.

Prosecutors have said Claudio Manuel Neves Valente carried out both attacks.

After a nearly week-long manhunt, the

authorities found Valente’s dead body in a storage unit

in Salem, New Hampshire, just over the border from Massachusetts.

The videos from Valente were on an electronic device that was found in the storage facility, the US Attorney’s Office said on Jan 6. 

The comments fail to shed any light on why Valente targeted Brown or Professor Loureiro, who led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Valente studied physics at Brown in the early 2000s and also attended the same university in Lisbon as Prof Loureiro, officials have said. 

Sophomore Ella Cook and freshman Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov were killed in the shooting at Brown. 

Valente expressed no remorse for his actions, according to the transcript provided by prosecutors, which translated his remarks to English from Portuguese.

“I am not going to apologise, because during my lifetime, no one sincerely apologised to me,” Valente said.

At Brown, he attacked an exam-prep session for an economics class that was being held in the Barus & Holley engineering building. 

“I never wanted to do it in an auditorium. I wanted to do it in a regular room,” Valente said. “I had plenty of opportunities, especially this semester, I had plenty of opportunities, but I always chickened out.” 

He also criticised students for hiding under tables and chairs. Alluding to speculation that he had shouted something before firing, Valente said he did not remember saying anything but might have said “Oh no” because he initially thought the room he had entered was empty. 

The 48-year-old Portuguese national came to the US on a student visa in the early 2000s and was granted a green card through the lottery programme in 2017.

Valente said he had “no hatred towards America” but also “no love for it”. He also said that coming to the country was a “mistake”.

The authorities said the investigation into Valente’s motives continues. BLOOMBERG