Inside the chaotic first hours of the Brown University shooting that left 2 dead

Reports poured in second by second after a shooter first opened fire at Brown University, starting amid chaos but moving toward a stand as authorities spent hours searching the campus for a suspect, call records from that day show.

Two students were killed and nine others injured in the December 13 shooting. Investigators later identified the shooter as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, whose body was found in a storage locker in New Hampshire days later in what authorities believe was a suicide after the death of a professor who worked for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Providence police and fire dispatch logs obtained by NBC News show a flurry of reports beginning at 4:06 p.m. and continuing late into the evening as Brown’s campus remained on lockdown for hours.

At 4:06:45 p.m., a dispatcher reported a call classified as a “shooting” within seconds, according to the logs.

At 4:06:59 p.m., the same dispatcher reported that a person had been shot. Over the next 30 seconds, the location of the incident was updated several times, according to the logs. At the same time, another dispatcher received a call about shots fired at Barus and Holley, the engineering building where students were studying for their final exams.

At 4:11:13 p.m., dispatch logs indicated two men were shot, one in the shoulder and the other in the abdomen.

At 4:12:02 p.m., a dispatcher took a report of a suspect wearing black with a mask. Thirteen seconds later, another dispatcher recorded a similar description.

At 4:13:37 p.m., a dispatcher reported that a woman had been shot multiple times in Barus Hall. Less than two minutes later, at 4:15:01 p.m., a caller told dispatchers he heard 10 gunshots on the first floor while sheltering in place.

Six victims were confirmed as of 4:15 p.m., according to the newspapers.

At 4:19:19 p.m., a caller reported that a woman outside the library had been shot and needed medical attention. Two minutes later, another caller reported what appeared to be the same woman shot in the leg outside the library.

Two dispatchers recorded reports of a possible suspect inside a building 10 seconds apart at 4:22 p.m. — only to mark “no suspects at this time” less than two minutes later. The logs also show police cleared the scene, finding about 200 students in a single room and others hiding alone in the bathrooms.

Hours after the first shots were fired, authorities were still conducting secondary searches of the school. Logs show responders reporting a “live victim” at 6:21:59 p.m.

Around 7:30 a.m., buses were dispatched to take the families to a reunification center, according to the newspapers.

Brown University’s stay-at-home order won’t be lifted until the next morning. By then, authorities had moved from securing the scene to identifying and locating the suspect, authorities later said.

A person of interest was arrested the next morning, but was released later that day after Rhode Island officials said the evidence pointed elsewhere.

Five days after the shooting, a judge signed an arrest warrant for Neves Valente in connection with the attack.

Neves Valente was from Portugal. He graduated at the top of his class and moved to the United States to study at Brown from August 2000 to spring 2001 on a physics doctoral student visa. program. He requested a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and finally withdrew in 2003, according to a Providence police affidavit.

Authorities still don’t know why he targeted the school.

“Why Brown? I think it’s a mystery,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. He added: “I don’t think we know why now, or why Brown, why these students, why this class. It’s really unknown to us.”