About a dozen references on the Brown University website to a student, whom JNS is not naming and who some claim resembles images that law enforcement released of the alleged shooter, appeared to be scrubbed on Tuesday, with the lone reference appearing in a PDF file of an annual report.
Brian Clark, vice president for news and strategic campus communications at Brown, told JNS that “in the aftermath of the shooting, we’ve seen harmful doxxing activity directed toward at least one member of the Brown University community.”
“It’s important to make clear that targeting individuals could do irrevocable harm. Accusations, speculation and conspiracies we’re seeing on social media and in some news reports are irresponsible, harmful and in some cases dangerous for the safety of individuals in our community,” Clark stated.
“It is not unusual as a safety measure to take steps to protect an individual’s safety when this kind of activity happens, including in regard to their online presence,” he added. “As law enforcement officials stated clearly on Tuesday afternoon, if this individual’s name had any relevance to the current investigation, they would be actively looking for this individual and providing information publicly.”
Asked at a press conference about the removed pages, Peter Neronha, the Rhode Island attorney general, said that “there are lots of reasons why a page might be taken down, particularly if there’s chatter out there.”
“It’s easy to jump from someone saying words that were spoken to what those words are to a particular name that reflects a motive targeting a particular person. That’s a really dangerous road to go down,” he said. “Really dangerous. If that name meant anything to this investigation, we would be out looking for that person. We will let you know we were looking for that person.”
“I would leave it to us to identify persons of interest and let us run them down,” he added.
Law enforcement detained a person of interest, whom it later released. On Tuesday, it published new images of the suspected shooter, who killed two students and injured others on Saturday when the shooter attacked a review session for an economics class. The teacher, who also teaches in the Judaic studies program at Brown, was not present in the class at the time.
