Brown University gunman recorded videos saying attack was planned for months
A gunman who fatally shot two Brown University students before killing a professor in another state planned the attack for months and expressed no remorse, according to details of confessional-style videos released by investigators.
Transcripts of clips recorded by Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, show him saying he spent “six semesters” planning the attack in Providence, Rhode Island, on December 13.
The Portuguese immigrant defended his actions, but indicated no motive, according to transcripts.
Two days later, Nuno Loureiro, an MIT professor, was fatally shot at his home near Boston by the gunman, who then committed suicide.
The classroom attack, which killed students Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, and injured nine others, shocked the country and sparked criticism over the time it took police to identify a suspect.
The videos were discovered in a New Hampshire storage unit with the attacker’s body on December 18 after a manhunt across three US states.
In the footage, he spoke in his native Portuguese, the US Department of Justice said.
English translations of the transcripts were released Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.
“Although Neves Valente stated that Brown University was his target, based on an initial review of the evidence collected, he provided no motive for targeting the Brown University students or the MIT professor,” the prosecutor’s office said in a press release.
“Neves Valente showed no remorse during the recordings; instead, he exposed his true nature when he blamed innocent, unarmed children for their deaths at his hands and complained about a self-inflicted injury when he shot the MIT professor point-blank.”
In the transcripts, the shooter complained that a discharged bullet casing hit him in the eye.
Investigators said the suspect attended the same university in Portugal as the MIT professor and they likely knew each other.
He described being confronted by a witness during the campus attack, adding: “Honestly, I never thought it would take them this long to find me.”
A former Brown University student, he denied in his videos that he suffered from mental illness and said the attack was not motivated by ill will toward the United States.
“I have no hatred toward America,” he said, while calling his decision to come to the United States a “mistake.”
In their statement, prosecutors promised the investigation would continue, but that there was no ongoing threat to the public.
