Providence mayor, police chief honored at college basketball game after Brown shooter investigation
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez received a rousing applause at Friday night’s men’s college basketball game between Providence and Seton Hall.
The cheers came a day after the alleged gunman who shot and killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor earlier this week was found dead by local authorities in Salem, New Hampshire.
Smiley and Perez came under national scrutiny in the days after the shooting because their investigation included the detention of an innocent man who was mistaken as the suspect and questionable transparency with the public throughout the manhunt.
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The investigation lasted six days before authorities located the suspected shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot in a Salem storage unit Thursday.
The surrounding community spent days waiting for answers, with residents on edge after the school sent students home early after the shooting.
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Detectives initially questioned a person of interest at a hotel outside town but ruled him out as a suspect, according to authorities.
Police spent days canvassing the neighborhood for surveillance video, which turned up images of a person of interest — a masked, stocky figure who stood around 5 feet, 8 inches tall and walked with an odd gait.
Neves Valente, 48, was a Portuguese national and studied physics at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001, according to Brown President Christina Paxson. But he went on a leave of absence and ultimately withdrew in 2003.
Neves Valente’s motive has not been determined and is still under investigation.
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