On Saturday, December 13th, 2025, there was a school shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It is estimated that the shooting happened at around 4 p.m. inside the auditorium located in the Borus and Holley Engineering building on campus. Two students were killed in the shooting and nine were wounded. The victims were identified as 19-year-old Ella Cook, a sophomore at Brown University from Alabama, and Mukhammed Aziz Umurzokov, a freshman at Brown University.
On Sunday morning, the 14th of December, a person of interest was taken into custody. Upon further investigation, the suspect was found innocent and was released from custody.
Worry and doubt spread throughout the community, mostly due to the previous false lead. It is said that the false lead delayed the search for the true perpetrator by a whole day. Luckily, surveillance cameras caught photos and videos of the suspect mere hours before the attack. Police are saying, “The suspect is described as male, approximately 5’8” with a stocky build.” In the photos and videos, the suspect was seen in an all-black outfit.
To help speed up the search for the perpetrator, the FBI had implemented a $50,000 reward for any information that leads to the conviction and arrest of the person responsible for this tragedy.
On December 15, 2025, Brown University’s MIT professor, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, was fatally shot in his home in Brookline, Massachusetts- just two days after the Brown University shooting. On December 18, 2025, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente was found dead in a storage facility. Neves Valente was a Portuguese National who was found responsible for the Brown University shooting and the assassination of Nuno F.G. Loureiro. This was determined after the FBI searched the storage facility he was found in. In the facility, the FBI found a device that had a series of short videos on it that were recorded after each shooting.
The Department of Justice has released translations of these videos to the public. There are eight total translations that are available to read. The first translation explains how he almost got caught when he was captured on surveillance footage outside of the storage facility and how he was surprised the police had not caught up to him sooner. The second expresses how he didn’t have a motive for these shootings and simply had no love or hatred for anyone in the U.S. or in Portugal; the shootings were just about opportunity. Another states that he never planned for the shooting to take place in the auditorium and wanted it to take place in a “regular room.” In this translation, he never explained why he killed or targeted the students that he did. In the next video, he explains the feelings behind the shootings. He says, “I do not like any one of you.” He seemed to be angry at anyone and everything in the world, since he also mentioned how he doesn’t believe this world can be redeemed. Following the theme of feelings, in the next video he said he is not sorry and will never apologize for what he did, since no one ever apologized to him. In the last few videos, he explained that the shootings were hard to do, that three emails would be sent out that night, presumably the night of his suicide, and that he was not mentally ill, despite his ongoing rambling in the videos and the heinous acts that he took part in.
Naturally, this devastating event has left quite the impact on the community; citizens of the town and the students at Brown University are left shaken up and on edge. For the foreseeable future, there will be patrol on the Brown University campus. Their governor, Dan McKee, has also ordered a review of the school’s safety measures, with the hope of preventing something like this from happening in the future. Additionally, all of the remaining in-person final exams for the Fall 2025 semester have been cancelled at the university so the students can properly process and grieve the loss of their former classmates.
Unfortunately, gun violence is becoming more and more common in the U.S., with around 230 school shootings and 408 mass shootings being recorded in America in 2025.
