NEW YORK (Gray Media) – Thursday night Law enforcement officials confirmed the suspect in last Saturday’s shooting at Brown University was found dead. Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the man suspected of killing two Brown students and injuring nine, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Salem, NH. Officials believe the 48-year-old former Brown student was also connected to the killing of an MIT professor earlier this week.

Neves Valente was a student in the early 2000s at Brown and a fellow student of Dr. Nuno Loureiro, the MIT professor. His motive was unknown, but university officials said he likely spent a lot of time in the building where he carried out the attack.

A six-day manhunt led law enforcement to a storage unit where they found Neves Valente, who came to the U.S. from Portugal originally on a student visa, eventually receiving a green card to stay in the country. Rhode Island’s Attorney General Peter Neronha said tips from the public were crucial in finally identifying the suspect.

“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car. Which led us to the name. Which led us to the photographs of that individual renting the car, which matched the clothing of our shooter here in Providence,” said Neronha.

In response to the tragedy and ensuing investigation, President Donald Trump paused the diversity visa lottery program the suspect used to get a green card. Some 50,000 visas per year are granted to students from countries with low rates of immigration to the US.

Copyright 2025 Gray DC. All rights reserved.

The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office has closed a complaint after finding that Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill did not engage in illegal electioneering.

At issue were a series of emails Liot Hill, a Lebanon Democrat, had sent from her official government account to help the partisan Elias Law Group connect with voters impacted by a new state voting law.

Republican lawmakers said that was an inappropriate use of official resources, threatening to impeach Liot Hill over her correspondence. James MacEachern, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, reported his concerns to the Attorney General’s Office in August.

In August, the Elias Law Group, which represents Democrats and progressive causes, represented three visually-impaired plaintiffs who sued New Hampshire officials over the constitutionality of a new law that would tighten photo ID requirements for voters seeking an absentee ballot. That case was recently dismissed by a New Hampshire Superior Court judge.

This week, the Attorney General’s Election Law Unit released its determination that Liot Hill’s emails did not constitute illegal electioneering, in a Dec. 18 letter to MacEachern.

The Election Law Unit said it reviewed five emails from Liot Hill’s official government account that MacEachern had provided.

It found the content of the emails did not meet the state’s definition of electioneering, “because it does not relate in any way to ‘the vote of a voter on any question or office,’ i.e., something to be voted on at an election,” Brendan A. O’Donnell, senior assistant attorney general in the Election Law Unit, said in the letter.

“Moreover, it is not uncommon for elected officials to use their official capacity to take a position on the constitutionality of an enacted law that is being challenged in court,” O’Donnell said.

However, the letter noted that Liot Hill’s emails did raise the risk that its recipients — including two executive branch officials — could interpret her requests for help as commands.

“All executive branch officials should use care to avoid acting in any way that would create an appearance of impropriety,” said O’Donnell.

But, he continued, his office did not find in this case that there had been a misuse of position or that the emails otherwise violated the executive branch ethics code.

MacEachern said he still has concerns about Liot Hill, when reached for comment on the Election Law Unit’s findings.

“This report, among others, continues to raise serious questions about Councilor Liot-Hill’s judgement and brazen willingness to push ethical boundaries with her conduct,” he said in an email.

But Liot Hill said the findings “underscore the partisan nature of the ongoing attacks” against her, including the impeachment proceedings Republicans have failed against her.

“I am being impeached not for wrong-doing, but for being a Democrat,” she said in an email.

Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her @amanda_gokee.

CONCORD — The recent fatal shooting at Brown University shows that banning guns on campus makes students more vulnerable to violence, state Rep. Sam Farrington, a University of New Hampshire senior, told reporters Dec. 17 in promoting legislation to end such bans.

Farrington, R-Rochester, and other House Republicans, also said in the Statehouse news conference that the shooting that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia on Sunday, illustrates that Australia’s restrictive gun laws don’t protect the public.

Rep. Joe Sweeney, R-Salem, the deputy House majority leader, said gun control restrictions leave people “unable to defend themselves, their families, their peers.”

Farrington said violence similar to what occurred at Brown University in Rhode Island, which left two dead and nine injured, could occur in New Hampshire, where universities also prohibit guns on campus.

“UNH, Plymouth State, Keene State, the list goes on, they all have one thing in common — these are public universities that are infringing on the Second Amendment rights of college students right here in New Hampshire,” said Farrington.

“They claim to be gun free zones. Well if we know anything about gun-free zones, looking at Australia and Brown, we know that they are not violence free zones. They are only defenseless zones where victims are left hopeless, without any hope of defending themselves.”

Claudio Neves Valente: What to know about the Brown, MIT shooter

He is the prime sponsor of House Bill 1793, which the Legislature will consider next year. It would prohibit public colleges and universities from regulating the possession or carrying of firearms and non-lethal weapons on campus.

Under the bill, if a college or university that received federal funds instituted such a ban, they could be sued.

Democrat speaks against legislation

State Rep. Nicholas Germana, D-Keene, a history professor at Keene State College, said Thursday he wouldn’t feel any safer if people coming on campus were packing firearms.

Any police response to an active shooter on a college campus would be fraught if armed bystanders became involved and crossfire broke out, he said.

“All the sudden police come on that campus and it’s a shootout at the OK Corral,” Germana said. “How do police know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is?”

He said the tragedy in Australia last weekend is an anomaly that doesn’t alter the fact that gun violence rates in that country decreased after strict firearm regulations were passed almost 30 years ago and remain much lower than U.S. rates.

“We can look around the world to see examples of this where the number of guns in the population at large corresponds to gun violence,” Germana said. “It’s clear that when Republicans say in this country that gun control measures do not decrease gun violence, it is demonstrably false.”

The University System of New Hampshire said in the fiscal note of House Bill 1793 that the measure could cost it as much as $500,000 because insurance premiums and liability claims would increase, more security measures would be required, firearm storage systems would be needed, expected lawsuits would create attorney fees and the ability to attract students and faculty would decrease.

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. Don’t just read this. Share it with one person who doesn’t usually follow local news — that’s how we make an impact. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.