Manhunt for Brown University shooter renewed after police release detained man

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island – Police officers were going door-to-door on Dec 15 seeking footage from home surveillance cameras as investigators renewed a manhunt for the

gunman who killed two students and injured seven more in a classroom at Brown University

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The search for the suspect, which included posting new video footage of the possible shooter, resumed after the authorities released a man they had detained over the weekend as a “person of interest”.

The news that the gunman remained at large put Providence back on edge, though officials said there were no credible threats ​to the community and that they would not reimpose a shelter-in-place order for the campus and the surrounding area that had been lifted earlier.

“People are very confused and nervous,” real estate agent Sue Erkkinen said. “We are staying indoors. We have all been glued to the TV, and it looks like the manhunt is now back on.”

Providence police chief Oscar Perez told reporters at an evening press conference that law enforcement was trying to reassure residents by keeping a visibly high profile in the community.

He played three short video clips from home surveillance footage of the suspect, a man of stocky build dressed in a dark jacket, hat and face mask, walking through the College Hill neighbourhood near campus about two hours before the shooting.

One clip showed him pacing along a white picket fence, another crossing a street corner, and a third walking past a gated home. Two still photos of him on a pavement were also shown, but the man’s face was obscured by the mask he wore.

“The sooner we can identify this person, the sooner we can blow this case open,” state Attorney-General Peter Neronha said at the briefing.

Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent in charge Ted Docks, from Boston, said a US$50,000 (S$65,000) reward was being offered for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the suspect, who he said was presumed to be armed and dangerous.

Mr Perez said the murder weapon was a 9mm gun from which several rounds were fired.

The neighbourhood was eerily quiet ​on Dec 15, several ​residents told Reuters, as most people stayed behind locked doors.

Officers were knocking on doors, asking whether anyone had seen anything or had cameras that might have caught a glimpse of the suspect, while police helicopters whirred overhead.

One family left to stay with friends in another town, while a first-floor tenant was so frightened that she asked her landlord to let her spend time on the second floor, neighbours said.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley’s home, less than a block from the site of the shooting, served as ground zero for officials to gather over the weekend.

Early lead fizzles as evidence shifts

The gunman fled after opening fire on Dec 13 in a classroom in Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering and physics building, where outer doors had been left unlocked while exams were taking place, the police said.

Students spent hours barricaded in classrooms or hiding beneath furniture as officers fanned out across campus searching for the attacker on Dec 14.

Officials said late on Dec 14 that there had been enough evidence to justify taking into custody an unnamed person of interest, a man in his 20s.

The announcement of the detainment early on Dec 14 provided what turned out to be a short-lived measure of relief for students and city residents.

Mr Neronha said hours later that investigators had determined there was “no basis to believe that he is a ​person of interest, so... he is being released”.

On Dec 15, the Attorney-General said the individual “has been cleared”, adding that the investigation has since gone in a different direction.

Brown is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the US. The Ivy League school, which has nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students, cancelled exams and classes for the rest of the year.

Shooting victims mourned

The two students killed were Ms Ella Cook, a sophomore from Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Mr Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an Uzbekistan-born Virginian.

Ms Cook was vice-president of the school’s College Republicans and a “leading Republican voice at Brown”, according to a post by the New York Republicans Club on social media platform X.

Her LinkedIn profile included jobs as an ice cream server at a Mountain Brook creamery and a programme assistant in New York.

“Wesley and I join the Mountain Brook community and all of Alabama in mourning the heartbreaking loss of one of our own, Ella Cook, who was senselessly killed over the weekend on Brown University's campus,” Senator Katie Britt of Alabama wrote in a statement with her ​husband Wesley.

Mr Umurzokov, an aspiring neurosurgeon, was his family’s “biggest role model”, according to a GoFundMe campaign set up by his family.

“He always lent a helping hand to anyone in need without hesitation and was the most kind-hearted person our family knew,” ​the family wrote. “Our family is incredibly devastated by this loss.”

He graduated from Midlothian High School in Virginia in the spring as one of the top 10 students in his class, according to video of the school’s graduation ceremony.

In a statement, US Ambassador to Uzbekistan Jonathan Henick mourned “the loss of his bright future”. REUTERS