PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Having unleashed a multiagency manhunt — involving the Providence police, the FBI and a $50,000 reward — the clue investigators needed in the Brown University shooting was ultimately found not on a street corner but in a Reddit thread.
Online tipsters have had a mixed record when it comes to providing information about mass casualty incidents. But Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said this Reddit user “blew the case wide open” after posting about their encounter on Saturday with the suspect.
“I’m being dead serious,” wrote the Reddit user, identified in an affidavit as “John,” three days after the shootings at Brown. “The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental.”
In police interviews that followed, the Reddit user said he had bumped into the suspect in a bathroom inside the Barus Holley building at Brown and noticed his clothes were “inappropriate and inadequate” for New England's December weather, the affidavit said. John followed the suspect outside, leading to a “game of cat and mouse” that ended when the suspect confronted him and asked, “Why are you harassing me?”
Those details were pivotal to tracking down the suspect, later identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who was found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Neronha said.
“That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photographs of that individual renting the car, which matched the clothing of our shooter here in Providence, that matched the satchel,” the attorney general told a news conference.
Triggering this sequence of events was the Reddit post on Tuesday.
John responded to a thread in which a user had posted the FBI's Brown University shooting "seeking information" flyer that included photographs of the suspect and a reward offering as much as $50,000 for information on him.
“That was the car he was driving,” John said of the Nissan with Florida plates. “He used his key fob to open the car, approached it and then something prompted him to back away. When he backed away he relocked the car. I found that odd so when he circled the block I approached the car and that is when I saw the Florida plates.”
Told by another Reddit user, “I think you’re on to something,” he responded, “Thank you and respectfully I know I am.” He said he had been interviewed by Providence and Rhode Island State Police, “and I imagine the FBI were listening in another room.”
Before Valente was found dead, John added, “Let’s hope this” person of interest “is apprehended soon so the authorities can get to the bottom of this.”
A day after his first post, John approached Providence Police officers near Brown University Alumni Hall and said he wanted to speak with them, the affidavit said. He voluntarily accompanied them to the police station where he gave an interview.
John told them about the bathroom encounter four days earlier, “involved John locking eyes with the suspect,” after which he followed him into the parking lot, the affidavit said. During their cat-and-mouse game, John asked why the man kept on “circling the block?” To which the man replied, “I don’t know you from anybody.”
When detectives showed John two security images of the suspect's car, he replied, “Holy s---. That might be it,” the affidavit said. Through that footage, police were able to track the car to the home of MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, and the New Hampshire storage lock-up where Valente was found dead.
Loureiro was found shot to death in his Boston-area home days after the Brown shooting.
On Friday, caution tape cordoned off the area where the encounter between John and the suspect happened. Brown’s engineering building should have been full of nervous students shuffling in and out of final exams. Instead, camera crews, police and decaying floral bouquets stood in their place.
Just blocks away normally bustling Thayer Street remained a ghost town on Friday night, despite the days-long manhunt coming to an end. The few residents making their way up and down the street suggested that Providence is as mystified as the rest of America about the identity of the tipster.
John posted on Reddit that he won't be saying more publicly.
“Respectfully, I have said all I have to say on the matter to the right people,” he posted to Reddit.
Neither John nor Reddit responded to requests for comment sent late Thursday.
Authorities say he may be eligible for the $50,000 reward.
“It would be logical to think that, absolutely, that individual would be entitled to that,” Ted Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston, told reporters.
