A Reddit user provided a crucial tip that helped investigators track down the suspected shooter of Brown students and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
Three days after the deadly Brown University shooting, with the authorities struggling to find the perpetrator, cops were sifting through a torrent of leads when one anonymous tip stood out—pointing investigators to a post on the popular social media site.
“I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the user wrote, according to a Providence police affidavit.
Authorities say the message ultimately helped crack open the hunt for the campus gunman—and, in the process, tied the case to the killing of a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—bringing an end to a manhunt that had rattled both communities.
According to the affidavit, the day after the post appeared, the person behind the account—a Brown University graduate-turned-janitor listed only as “John”—contacted law enforcement and described an encounter with a man he found suspicious inside Brown’s Barus and Holley building.
Rhode Island’s attorney general Peter Neronha, speaking on Thursday at a press conference after authorities announced that shooting suspect Claudio Neves Valente, 48, had been found dead in a Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility, said “John” the Redditor “blew this case wide open.”
“That person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” he added.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said the man had confronted the suspect before the shooting because it seemed like he didn’t belong in the building.
The suspect then “ran” and asked the man, “Why are you harassing me?” according to Perez. The tipster then walked away.
“That information was critical to us because it was able to corroborate what our detectives were seeing on video, and it was able to provide a great explanation,” Perez added.
Authorities tracked the car to a rental agency in Massachusetts, and from there to New Hampshire.
Valente died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
On Monday, the FBI announced a $50,000 reward “for information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the individual responsible for the Brown University mass shooting.”
The FBI and the Providence Police Department did not immediately confirm reports that the tipster is homeless. In an affidavit, authorities refer to the witness, listed as “John,” as a custodian.
The FBI separately told the Daily Beast it could not disclose whether it would pay out the reward or to whom.
But FBI Boston Special Agent Ted Docks said at Thursday’s press conference that the man who confronted Valente “will likely... absolutely [get] some aspect of that reward.”
“We’ve had a lot of other tips, I will tell you as well, that have come in from the public,” he added. “I don’t deal typically with the distribution of those rewards, but it would be logical to think that absolutely that that individual would be entitled to some of that reward.”
Perez said the man who was “very cooperative and helpful” to them was a Brown University graduate.
Neronha weighed in moments later: “He was incredibly articulate, and his testimony, had we needed it, would not only have been credible—it would have been persuasive. He was as outstanding a witness as I’ve seen.”
“I don’t know if he’s going to get the reward or not, but if I had a vote, he would,” he said.
Valente was a former Brown student, having been enrolled from 2000 to 2001, pursuing a graduate degree in physics, Brown University President Christina Paxson said.
“The majority of physics classes at Brown have always been held within the Barus and Holley classrooms and labs,” she added, referring to the shooting locations.
Valente, police said, is also suspected of killing Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professor Nuno Loureiro in a Monday night shooting.
Authorities believe the two had attended the same school in Lisbon, Portugal.
“I think there’s a lot of unknowns with respect to motive,” Neronha said.
