Students injured in Brown University shooting sue school, alleging security failures
PROVIDENCE, RI — Brown University is accused in lawsuits filed by three students injured in the Dec. 13 campus shooting that the Ivy League school ignored advance warnings about the shooter and failed to provide adequate security that could have prevented the tragedy.
The lawsuits, which were filed last week in Rhode Island Superior Court, allege that the anonymous plaintiffs suffered because Brown failed to maintain “reasonable and appropriate security measures.”
“As a direct and proximate result of Brown’s above-mentioned negligent acts, Plaintiff suffered and was afflicted with serious and serious bodily injury, causing him great pain to his body, mind, nerves, and nervous system,” one of the lawsuits states.
The plaintiffs behind the lawsuits are anonymous.
A Brown University spokesperson said they were reviewing complaints “carefully and expeditiously.”
“Out of respect for the plaintiffs’ privacy, we have no details to share on the merits of the litigation at this time,” spokesman Brian Clark said in a statement.
According to law enforcement, shooter Claudio Neves Valente, 48, entered a study session in a Brown academic building on Dec. 13 and opened fire on students, killing 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov and wounding nine others.
Two days later, authorities said, Neves Valente, who studied physics at Brown about 20 years ago, also fatally shot Nuno FG Loureiro, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at Loureiro’s Boston-area home.
Neves Valente, who had attended school with Loureiro in Portugal in the 1990s, was found dead days later in a New Hampshire warehouse. Authorities say he committed suicide. An autopsy determined that Neves Valente died on December 16, the same day Loureiro died in the hospital.
The lawsuits claim that Brown’s campus security was alerted by a guard that Neves Valente had “inspected” the building, but that the school failed to investigate the information.
Shortly after the shooting, Brown’s president placed campus police on leave as part of a review of the school’s security policies.
Much of the attention has focused on whether the Ivy League school had installed security cameras in the building where the attack took place and the general ease of access to campus buildings.
