Brown University Custodian Reported Suspect Sightings Weeks Before Shooting
NEED TO KNOW
- A Brown University custodian reportedly said he spotted the suspect several times in the lead-up to the deadly mass shooting
- The custodian said he told security about a suspicious man twice prior to the shooting on Dec. 13
- “He’d been casing that place for weeks,” Derek Lisi told The Boston Globe
A Brown University custodian reportedly said he spotted the suspect several times in the weeks before the deadly mass shooting that killed two people and injured several others.
Authorities said the suspected shooter, identified as Claudio Neves Valente, 48, opened fire on Dec. 13 on Brown’s campus in Providence, R.I.
Valente is also believed by authorities to have killed Nuno Loureiro, an MIT professor who was fatally shot inside his home in Brookline, Mass. two days later, PEOPLE previously reported.
Derek Lisi, who has worked as a custodian at Brown for over a decade, told The Boston Globe and WPRI he had seen the suspect multiple times and that he’d voiced his suspicions to a campus security guard prior to the shooting.
“He’d been casing that place for weeks,” Lisi told The Globe.
According to Lisi, he saw a man wearing clothes matching those in the suspect’s description walking around the building where the shooting took place several times, beginning in November.
“I knew there was something off with him,” Lisi said, per the paper.
Lisi reportedly said he told a security guard twice that he had seen someone suspicious.
One day in December, Lisi told the paper that he decided to follow the man after spotting him in the parking lot. When the man noticed Lisi, the custodian alleged the suspicious character began walking away quickly and went into a bathroom.
“I said, ‘Something’s off with this guy, so I gotta say something,’” Lisi said, according to The Globe.
The students killed in the attack at Brown were identified as Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook.
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.
Officials said Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, attended Brown in the early 2000s but did not graduate from the Ivy League school.
The New York Times previously reported that authorities believe Neves Valente and Loureiro, a fellow Portuguese national, knew each other and studied together in Lisbon.
Neves Valente was found dead in a storage unit in Salem, N.H., on Thursday, Dec. 18, after a lengthy manhunt.
NOTE: THIS SITE DOES NOT BELONG TO FACEBOOK
