Federal authorities said on Wednesday that the December 2025 shootings at Brown University and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor were not acts of terrorism, concluding that the gunman acted alone and was driven by personal grievances.
The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts identified the shooter as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national and U.S. legal permanent resident. Investigators said he killed two students and wounded nine others in a classroom at Brown in Providence, R.I., on Dec. 13, before fatally shooting MIT professor Nuno Loureiro at his home in Brookline, Mass., two days later.
“His actions were determined to have no nexus to terrorism,” the FBI stated.
Valente “made a series of audio files and short videos in which he confessed to committing these crimes, showed no remorse and provided no reason for his actions” after the shootings, according to the findings of the investigation.
Valente, who lived in Miami, came to the United States in 2000 on a student visa at Brown University. He was found dead on Dec. 18 in a storage unit in Salem, N.H., with two legally purchased 9mm handguns nearby. Both weapons were used in the attacks, the FBI said.
The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit concluded that “Valente’s victims were symbolic in nature” and that he “was driven by an accumulation of grievances that he collected throughout his life.”
“Brown University as a whole and Dr. Loureiro represented to the shooter his personal failures and injustices he perceived were inflicted by others over time,” the unit stated. “By attacking them, Neves Valente was likely able to overcome his shame and envy by using violence to punish those communities that he perceived contributed to his downfall.”
Investigators said Valente had lived a transient and socially isolated life and had engaged in long-term planning, factors that limited opportunities for others to recognize warning signs.
