Suspected Brown University gunman found dead

A man who is suspected of killing two and wounding several others at Brown University has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility where he had rented a unit, officials said.

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead on Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Providence police chief Oscar Perez said at a news conference. Mr Perez said as far as investigators know, the suspect acted alone.

Investigators believe Valente is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor who was fatally shot in his Brookline home on Monday, US attorney for Massachusetts Leah B Foley said.

Two people were killed and nine were wounded in the mass shooting on Saturday at Brown University.

The investigation had shifted on Thursday when authorities said they were looking into a connection between the Brown mass shooting and an attack two days later near Boston that killed 47-year-old MIT professor Nuno FG Loureiro.

Brown University president Christina Paxson said Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000.

“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.

Valente and Mr Loureiro attended the same academic programme at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said.

The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the two shootings.