What Went Wrong in Hunt for Brown Mass Shooter

What Went Wrong in Hunt for Brown Mass Shooter

 

 

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EDITOR’S NOTE: GoLocal leveraged a vast array of contacts in federal, state, and local law enforcement during the week of the Brown mass shooting. 
 

As a result of those relationships, GoLocal was the first news organization to report 

 

- The detention of the first person of interest

 

- The release of the first person of interest

 

- The second piece of video of the suspect - more than 40 hours after the shooting

 

- The death of the suspect

 

GoLocal was on-site at Barus & Holley Hall at 4:25 PM Saturday.

That being said, early in the investigation, there were some significant issues that may have led the suspect to evade law enforcement until his self-inflicted death on Tuesday.

 

The focus of this report is to bring attention to these issues in an effort to prevent their recurrence.

 

 

 

 

 

Last Thursday night, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez announced, “We got him.” 

 

But the reality was that the suspect in the Brown mass shooting, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, had been dead for two days. 

 

GoLocal has reviewed a copy of a photo of the individual identified as Neves Valente, and it was clear that the man found in the Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility on Thursday night had been deceased for a significant period of time.

 

The New Hampshire medical examiner said he died on Tuesday.

 

Mayor Brett Smiley and Perez have refused to respond to questions about whether they knew Neves Valente was dead at the time of the press conference. 

 

Rhode Island Attorney Peter Neronha said he only saw a photo of Neves Valente minutes before the press conference began, and he did not know how long he had been dead.

 

 

 

 

 

Six Days Earlier - Friction

 

It was six days earlier - it was a critical time in the race to identify and capture Neves Valente.

 

The confusion about when Neves Valente died - and if officials failed to disclose his death at the press conference — is minor compared to the issues that took place directly after the shooting. 

 

One question that has emerged is the ongoing friction between federal agencies and the Providence Police.

 

Two federal sources told GoLocal during the week that there is a lack of trust, due to Perez’s nephew — a major convicted fentanyl dealer.

As WPRI reported in 2023, “At the same time brothers Andres and Oscar Perez were climbing the ranks of the Providence Police Department, federal agents said their nephew – Jasdrual “Josh” Perez – was running a multistate fentanyl drug ring out of the capital city.” Perez has repeatedly claimed he was unaware of his nephew's activities.

In February of 2025, Jasdrual a/k/a Josh Perez was sentenced to 22.5 years in federal prison.

"Jasdural Perez was running a business that pumped over 200 kilograms of this deadly poison onto the streets of Massachusetts and neighboring states, wreaking havoc and destroying lives. This was not some low-level street dealer. This is a man who bought industrial pill presses to churn out millions of pills containing highly addictive and dangerous fentanyl.” said then-United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy of Massachusetts. Levy served under the Biden administration.

The friction between the federal and Providence Police has been referred to repeatedly by national news organizations. 

On Friday, Juliette Kayyem, a security expert who served as President Obama’s Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said on CNN that one of the critical lessons to learn from the response to the Brown mass shooting was better coordination between law enforcement agencies.

“Breakdown in local, state, and fed unity of effort. Let’s not deny it happened,” said Kayyem.

 

Attorney General Peter Nerhona played down the issues and told GoLocal, “I didn’t see any infighting and I was there.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did Not Collect Adjacent Video for More than 40 Plus Hours — Chasing the Coventry POI

 

 

Saturday, 4:05 PM

 

At about 4:05 PM on Saturday, December 13, a man, believed to be Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, walked out of Barus & Holley Hall at Brown University on Hope Street in Providence, and turned left toward Waterman.

 

He was captured on a Brown University security camera located on the German Studies Building, which is located on the corner of Hope and Waterman.

 

The video captured Neve Valente turning east on Waterman.

 

 

Saturday, 10:30 PM

That first video was released by the Providence Police after 10:30 PM on Saturday night.

From that time until Monday at 12:06 PM, when GoLocal published a video of the same man, no other video was published by law enforcement.

 

Saturday Night

According to three sources with direct knowledge, on Saturday night, the East Greenwich Police Department notified Providence Police that they were aware of a man who had tried to buy a gun in the town at some time earlier that “could be a candidate.”

Federal agents working off that tip traveled to a hotel in Coventry and detained the person of interest. Federal agents entered the motel at about 4:00 AM.

 

Sunday, 5:50 AM

At about 5:50 AM, GoLocal was notified by law enforcement sources that the POI had been detained.

GoLocal was also provided with his name — which GoLocal decided not to publish after reviewing his bio on social media.

Later in the day, other news organizations, including the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, published the name of the Coventry POI.

 

Sunday, 6:19 AM

GoLocal was the first news organization to report that the Coventry POI had been detained. READ HERE.

 

Sunday,  7:04 AM

At a press availability, Mayor Brett Smiley said, “We are able to report we have detained a person of interest.”

 

Sunday, 9:19 AM

A member of federal law enforcement told GoLocal that the Coventry POI who had been detained just hours earlier “was not the guy.”

 

 

Sunday 11:38 AM

But a post by FBI Director Kash Patel continued to promote the Coventry POI.

In a post to X, Patel wrote:

An update on the @FBI response at Brown University:

@FBIBoston established a command post to intake, develop and analyze leads, and run them to ground.

We activated the FBI’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team, to provide critical geolocation capabilities.

As a result, early this morning, FBI Boston’s Safe Streets Task Force, with assistance from the @USMarshalsHQ & the @Coventry_RI_PD, detained a person of interest in a hotel room in Coventry, RI, based off a lead by the @ProvidenceRIPD

We have deployed local and national resources to process and reconstruct the shooting scene - providing HQ and Lab elements on scene.

We set up a digital media intake portal to ingest images and video from the public related to this incident.

And the FBI’s victim specialists are fully integrating with our partners to provide resources to victims and survivors of this horrific violence.

This FBI will continue an all out 24/7 campaign until justice is fully served.

Thanks to the men and women of the FBI and our partners for their continued teamwork. Please continue praying for the victims and their families - as well as all those at Brown University.

 

 

Sunday, 11:59 AM

Smiley said, “We have no official update on the investigation.”

Chief Oscar Perez continued to reiterate that the POI in detention was viable.

 

 

Sunday, 6:16 PM

GoLocal was notified by a different member of federal law enforcement that the person of interest would be released. At about 9:30 PM, a senior member of law enforcement confirmed that the POI would be released.

 

Sunday, 10:32 PM

GoLocal was first to report that the Coventry POI would be released. READ HERE

 

 

Sunday, 11:03 PM

Mayor Brett Smiley, at a press briefing, confirmed what GoLocal had already reported.

The POI was being released.

 

Monday, 9:30 AM

GoLocal walked the area around the shooting and traveled east on Waterman and identified properties that may have been in possession of security video of the man captured Saturday walking immediately after the shooting.

GoLocal visited the Dulgarian Properties office at about 10:45 AM and asked whether they had any video. At 11:34 AM, the Dulgarian forwarded a video of the man who matched — that man has subsequently been identified as Neves Valente.

GoLocal asked the Dulgarians if they had been contacted by law enforcement, and they said they were contacted on Saturday night, but that no one had reached out to them until Monday morning to collect the video, after GoLocal obtained it. 

This was a gap of about 40 hours.

 

 

Monday, 11:45 AM

GoLocal notified the Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha and the Providence Police of the video and that it would be published, and sent a copy of the video to the Providence Police.

GoLocal published the video shortly after noon on Monday. 

At that time, it was 44 hours after the shooting.

 

 

Monday, 8:30 PM

On Monday night in Brookline, Massachusetts, Neves Vanlente reportedly drove to the home Nuno F.G. Loureiro, and dressed as an Amazon deliveryman, gained access to the MIT professor’s home and shot him. 

 

Tuesday, AM

Loureiro was pronounced dead at an area hospital on Tuesday morning, according to the Norfolk District Attorney's Office.

 

Tuesday

According to the New Hampshire medical examiner, Neves Valente killed himself in a storage container in Salem, New Hampshire.

All of the other investigations — the tracking down of the tipster “John,” the additional video collected, the tracking of the license plates, identifying the rental car and the identification of the storage facility were critical in finding Neves Valente’s corpse and getting closure for the victims, their families and the community, but all of it took place after he was dead.

But, for 44 hours, much of the investigation shifted to the Coventry POI, the wrong man.

No one "got" Neves Valente other than Neves Valente.