PROVIDENCE, RI (AP) — Authorities said Thursday they are looking into a link between last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University and an attack two days later near Boston that killed a professor at another elite school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
That’s according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Two of the people said investigators had identified a person of interest in the shootings and were actively searching for him.
The Brown gunman killed two students and wounded nine others in a classroom in the school’s engineering building on Saturday before escaping.
About 50 miles (80 kilometers) 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 at a hospital the next day.
The FBI previously said it knew of no connection between the cases.
How’s the Brown investigation going?
It’s been almost a week since the Brown shooting. There have been other high-profile attacks where it took days or more to make an arrest or find those responsible, including last year’s nasty five-day slaying of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare on a New York City sidewalk.
But frustration is growing in Providence that the person behind the attack managed to get away and that a clear picture of their face has yet to emerge.
“There is no deterrence among people who understand that not every case can be solved quickly,” state Attorney General Peter Neronha said at a news conference Wednesday.
Authorities canvassed the area for evidence and asked the public to check any phone or security records they may have in the week before the attack, believing the shooter may have cleared the scene ahead of time.
Investigators have released several videos from the hours and minutes before and after the shooting that show a person who police say matches witnesses’ description of the shooter. In the clips, the person stands, walks and even runs along the streets outside the campus, but always with a mask or head turned.
Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 rooms on campus, the attack took place in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, rooms. And investigators believe the shooter entered and exited through a door that faces a residential street adjacent to the campus, which could explain why Brown’s cameras did not capture images of the person.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said Wednesday the city is doing “everything possible” to keep residents safe. However, he admitted that it is “a scary time in the city” and that families may have had tough conversations about whether to stay in the city 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 this difficult question,” Smiley said when asked if the city is safe.
What can be learned from previous investigations?
While it’s not unheard of for someone to disappear after such a profile picture, it’s rare.
In such targeted and highly publicized attacks, shooters kill themselves or are killed or arrested by police, said Katherine Schweit, a retired FBI agent and expert on mass shootings. When they escape, searches can take time.
“The best they can do is what they are doing now, which is to continue to consolidate all the facts they have as quickly as they can,” she 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 one case from 2023, Army reservist Robert Card was found dead in an apparent suicide two days after killing 18 people and injuring 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 manslaughter 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 NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said it’s clear that shooters learn from others who have been caught.
“Most of the time an active shooter will come in and he’ll try to do what we call maximum carnage, maximum damage,” Rodriguez said. “And right now, they’re really trying to get away. And they’re actually evading the police with an effective methodology that we’ve never seen before.”
Investigators described the person they are looking for as about 5 feet, 8 inches (173 centimeters) tall and stocky. The attacker’s motives remain a mystery, but authorities said Wednesday that none of the evidence suggests that a specific person was targeted.
MIT mourns the loss of an esteemed professor
Loureiro, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was appointed last year to lead the school’s Center for Plasma Fusion and Science, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of MITl’s largest laboratories, had more than 250 people working in seven buildings when he took over. 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 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, said in a campus publication.
Loureiro had said he hoped his work would shape the future.
“It’s not hyperbole to say that MIT is the place you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” Loureiro said when he was appointed to lead the plasma science lab 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 being 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.