Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, along with Providence Mayor Brett P. Smiley, the Providence Police Department, Rhode Island State Police, the Boston Division of the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island, announced that Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, identified as responsible for a mass shooting at Brown University on December 13, 2025, has died.
Attorney General Neronha stated: “Our singular goal was to obtain justice for the victims of this senseless act, and tonight our community can begin to heal as we close the book on this unimaginable tragedy. While we’ll never be able to prosecute this individual, I hope this result begins to provide some small measure of closure for the victims and their families. I want to extend enormous gratitude to all of our law enforcement partners for their outstanding work in this case. Since Saturday, these men and women have worked around the clock in order to achieve justice for the victims and restore a sense of peace to Rhode Islanders.”
Authorities said that on December 18, 2025, a state court in Rhode Island issued an arrest warrant charging Neves Valente with two counts of murder and 23 felony counts related to assault and firearms offenses. The warrant was based on an affidavit from a Providence Police Detective.
Law enforcement located Neves Valente earlier in the evening at a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. After securing a federal search warrant for the location, officers entered and found him deceased from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Neves Valente was 48 years old and originally from Torres Novas in Santarem, Portugal. He became a Legal Permanent Resident of the United States after arriving as an F-1 student at Brown University in August 2000; he later withdrew from his doctoral program but obtained permanent residency status in April 2017.
Further information about the investigation is available through an attached affidavit.
