A Reddit post from a homeless man at Brown University helped investigators find mass shooter

Rick Sobey, Boston Herald on Dec 19, 2025

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BOSTON — Police are probably going to sift through a lot more Reddit posts in the future.

One of those online posts played a big role in helping investigators find the suspect who killed two students at Brown University, and injured nine others, before slaying the MIT professor in Brookline.

The 48-year-old suspect, Claudio Neves-Valente, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility Thursday night.

Authorities say he killed Brown University students Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook, and then he murdered MIT professor Nuno Loureiro.

It took investigators a long time to ID the suspect after the mass shooting Saturday night in Providence, followed by the assassination of the professor Monday night.

Then on Tuesday, authorities received a tip from an anonymous source about a Reddit post on the Providence sub-Reddit, according to the affidavit.

The Reddit poster — a homeless man — claimed that he saw the suspected shooter walking in the area of the Brown University mass shooting.

“I’m being dead serious,” reads the Reddit post. “The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving.”

Up until that point in the investigation, police had not released any videos with a grey Nissan or a vehicle with Florida plates.

“Based on the tip, investigators reviewed the surveillance videos further and located a grey/blue Nissan sedan,” reads the affidavit.

Then on Wednesday, a day after the Reddit post, authorities released images of the homeless man who was seen on camera interacting with the mass shooting suspect.

That evening, the homeless man named John went to Providence Police and identified himself as the Reddit poster.

John told police that he first encountered the suspect Saturday afternoon inside a bathroom at the Brown University building where the shooting later took place.

John called the suspect’s clothing as “inappropriate and inadequate for the weather.”

“There were several instances where John made eye contact with the Suspect or stood in close proximity to him,” the affidavit reads. “The initial encounter involved John locking eyes with the Suspect.”

When Neves-Valente left the building, John followed him down the street. That’s when John saw Neves-Valente approach the grey Nissan with Florida plates.

Neves-Valente then saw John following him, as the suspect walked in the opposite direction.

“John remained on that block and observed the Suspect looping back to the area, then switching directions every time they saw each other,” the affidavit reads. “John described this pattern as ‘a game of cat and mouse’ between himself and the Suspect.”

John then approached Neves-Valente, and they were standing only about two feet away from each other.

John asked Neves-Valente, “Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?”

Neves-Valente responded, “I don’t know you from nobody… Why are you harassing me?”

That was the last of their interaction. Neves-Valente later that day shot up the campus building.

Detectives obtained surveillance images of Neves-Valente’s rental vehicle and showed John the photos.

John responded, “Holy (expletive). That might be it.”

Surveillance cameras in the area showed 14 different instances of that grey Nissan with Florida plates.

Neves-Valente had rented the vehicle in downtown Boston — at Alamo Rent A Car on Atlantic Avenue. Authorities then obtained surveillance images of Neves-Valente at Alamo in Boston.

“In that critical video, Valente is seen wearing the exact same outfit as the Suspect on December 13,” the affidavit reads.

Neves-Valente was a Portuguese national. The MIT professor, Nuno Loureiro, was also Portuguese.

Neves-Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program from 1995 to 2000. Authorities believe the two men knew each other.

Back in the early 2000s, Neves-Valente was a Brown graduate student in the physics master’s of science to PhD track for three semesters. He formally withdrew from the program in 2003 and “has no active affiliation” with the school.

He took only physics classes, most of which are held in the Barus and Holley building where Saturday’s deadly shooting took place.

Neves-Valente was on a student visa in the country, and had applied for a Green Card and had obtained legal status.

He was living in Miami when he came to Boston, rented a car and began to stake out the Brown campus before Saturday’s shooting. He then murdered Loureiro and “immediately … drove to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where he had rented a storage unit in November of this year.”

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