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The frantic manhunt that terrified Brown University students ended when authorities found Claudio Neves Valente dead inside a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Law enforcement said the 48-year-old former Brown student was the suspect in the campus shooting that left multiple people injured and two students dead, and authorities believe he also killed an MIT professor days later.
On December 13, students huddled for a review session ahead of finals when a gunman burst into the lecture hall and opened fire, killing sophomore Ella Cook and freshman Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and wounding nine others. The images of grief and empty seats on that campus are a painful reminder that no college can claim immunity from violence, no matter how elite its name.
Two days after the Brown attack, Massachusetts authorities say MIT physics professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was shot and killed at his home in Brookline, and investigators have concluded the crimes were connected. The apparent cross-state spree exposed both the bravery of first responders and the high human cost when a determined killer moves through our cities.
Federal and local investigators credited a tipster who recognized the suspect’s photo online, tracing a rental car and a string of surveillance videos that showed plate-switching and travel between scenes before the suspect ended up at the storage facility. That painstaking detective work — neighbors sharing doorbell footage, cops following license-plate trails — is the kind of real policing that saves communities, not virtue-signaling speeches.
Officials say the motive remains unclear, but silence on why and how this happened is not an acceptable answer for grieving families and anxious campuses. Universities and local leaders must stop hiding behind cautious press statements and start explaining plainly what security failures allowed a shooter to enter an older, less-monitored engineering auditorium and escape unnoticed.
We also cannot ignore that the suspect was a foreign national who had obtained legal permanent residence in the United States in 2017, a fact that has reignited long-overdue questions about visa programs and screening processes. Leaders who reflexively defend porous policies while asking taxpayers to foot the bill for soft-on-security campuses need to explain how they will prevent future tragedies instead of offering condolences and bureaucratic silence.
Make no mistake: the families who lost children and the injured students deserve more than floral memorials and platitudes. They deserve a full accounting, reforms to campus security protocols, better coordination between city and federal law enforcement, and an immigration system that prioritizes safety and vetting over paperwork. Conservative Americans who believe in law and order should demand nothing less.
Finally, give credit where it is due — the tipster, the local detectives, and the federal teams worked relentlessly to close this chapter and prevent further harm, and their work must be matched by political courage. If politicians and university administrators will not act to protect students and faculty, citizens must insist on accountability, common-sense reforms, and a restoration of public safety as the top priority on every campus and in every community.
