PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Authorities said Thursday they are looking for a connection between last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University and two days later near Boston that killed a professor at another elite school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This is according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Two of the people said that investigators had identified a person of interest in the shootings and were actively searching for that individual.
The attacker at Brown on Saturday killed two students and wounded nine others in a classroom in the school’s engineering building before fleeing.
About 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the north, MIT professor Nuno FG Loureiro was shot dead in his home Monday night in the Boston suburb of Brookline. The 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist died in hospital the following day.
The FBI previously said it was not aware of any connection between the cases.
How is the Brown investigation going?
It has been almost a week since the shooting of Brown. There have been other high-profile attacks in which it took days or more to make an arrest or find those responsible, including the brazen New York City sidewalk killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare last year, which took five days.
But in Providence there is growing frustration that the person after the attack managed to escape and that a clear image of his face has yet to emerge.
“There is no discouragement among people who understand that not every case can be resolved quickly,” said the state attorney general, Peter Neronha, in a news conference Wednesday.
Authorities scoured the area for evidence and asked the public to check any phone or security footage they may have from the week before the attack, believing the shooter may have entered the scene ahead of time. But they gave no sense that they were close to catching the shooter.
The investigators released several videos from the hours and minutes before and after the shooting that show a person who, according to the police, matches the description of the witnesses of the shooter. In the clips, the person is standing, walking and even running along the streets just outside the campus, but always with a mask on or his head turned.
Although Brown officials said there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack took place in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door facing a residential street bordering the campus, which may explain why the Brown cameras did not capture footage of the person.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said Wednesday that the city is doing “everything possible” to keep residents safe. However, he acknowledged that it is a “scary time in the city” and that families were probably having tough conversations about whether to stay in town over the holidays.
“We’re doing everything we can to reassure people, to provide comfort, and that’s the best answer I can give to that difficult question,” Smiley said when asked if the city was safe.
Although it is rare for someone to disappear after carrying out such a high profile shooting.
What can be learned from past investigations?
In such targeted and highly publicized attacks, shooters typically kill themselves or are killed or arrested by police, said Katherine Schweit, a retired FBI agent and expert on mass shootings. When they move away, searches can take time.
“The best they can do is what they do now, which is to continue to press together all the facts they have as quickly as they can,” Schweit said. “And, really, the best hope for solutions will come from the public.”
In the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, it took investigators four days to track down the two brothers who carried it out. In a 2023 case, Army reservist Robert Card was found dead in an apparent suicide two days after killing 18 people and wounding 13 others in Lewiston, Maine.
The man accused of killing conservative political figure Charlie Kirk in September turned himself in about a day and a half after the attack on the Utah Valley University campus. And Luigi Mangione, who pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last year, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania.
Felipe Rodriguez, a retired New York police detective sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said it’s clear that shooters are learning from others who have been caught.
“Most of the time an active shooter will come in, and he will try to commit what we call maximum carnage, maximum damage,” Rodriguez said. “And at this point, they’re actually trying to escape. And they’re actually evading the police with an effective methodology, which I haven’t seen before.”
Investigators described the person they are looking for as about 5 feet, 8 inches (173 centimeters) tall and stocky. The motives of the attacker are still a mystery, but the authorities said on Wednesday that no evidence suggests that a specific person was being targeted.
MIT mourns the loss of a valued professor
Loureiro, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he has worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The centre, one of the school’s largest laboratories, had more than 250 people working in seven buildings when he took the helm. He was a professor of physics and nuclear science and engineering.
He grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at a nuclear fusion institute in Lisbon before joining MIT, the university said.
“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate and compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously directed MIT’s Center for Plasma Science and Fusion, told a campus publication.
Loureiro had said that he hoped that his work would shape the future.
“It is not a hyperbole to say that MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” said Loureiro when he was named to lead the plasma science laboratory last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”
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This story has been updated to delete a reference to MIT as an Ivy League school.
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Richer and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.