Category: Breaking News

Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, identified by authorities as the suspect in both the Dec 13 mass shooting at Brown University in Providence that killed two and injured nine and the Dec 15 murder of MIT Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in Brookline, MA, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Dec 18 in a storage locker in Salem, NH.

In a Thursday night press conference in Providence beginning around 9:30pm, local and federal police said that Valente, age 48, and Loureiro, age 47, had been undergraduate classmates together at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon (Portugal). Loureiro graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics in 2000, while Neves-Valente was “terminated” according to a report in Vanity Fair. In a press conference in Boston beginning around 10:30pm, US Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley confirmed the same suspect committed both crimes.

An affidavit filed by Providence Police in RI said Neves-Valente was a Portuguese national who was a PhD candidate in physics at Brown on a student visa during Fall 2000 and Spring 2001 semesters, taking a leave of absence and eventually withdrawing in Fall 2003. He then appears to have left the United States until receiving permanent resident status in 2017 through the “Green Card Lottery,” which has a 0.25% chance of success with over 20 million applications.

The suspect took considerable effort to evade capture, Foley said, switching out European SIM cards to prevent cellular telephone tracking and covering the Florida registration plate on his Boston rental car with a Maine plate not registered to any vehicle. Col Oscar Perez, Providence Police chief, said the suspect used side streets and avoided main streets to try to evade plate reading cameras.

There were two main breaks in the case, according to the affidavit. A Brown custodian told police he recalled meeting a suspicious person in the Barus-Holley Building, the site of the Dec 13 shooting, earlier on Nov 28 and Dec 1, and this person matched the appearance of the “person of interest” and walked with a limp. This report enabled police to find surveillance camera video from inside the building on Dec 1.

The second break resulted from an individual identified by police only as “John” who posted on Reddit, the social media web site, on Dec 15 at 9:30pm EST, by user “lamin_kaare” in the “r/providence” subreddit:

I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving. It was parked in front of the little shack behind the Rhode Island Historical Society on the Cooke St side. I know because he used his key fob to open the car, approached it and then something prompted him to back away. When he backed away he relocked the car. I found that odd so when he circled the block I approached the car and that is when I saw the Florida plates. He was parked in the section between the gate of the RIHS and the corner of Cooke and George St.

According to the affidavit, police regarded this post as highly credible once they learned of it because a Brown faculty member reported on Dec 17 an encounter at 9:15am on Dec 11 with a suspicious gray sedan with Florida plates driving unusually slowly on Waterman Street toward Thayer Street.

When made aware that Providence Police wanted to speak with him, “John” approached two officers near Brown Alumni Hall and agreed to be transported to headquarters for a voluntary interview. He said he noticed the suspect because he was dressed inappropriately and inadequately for the weather, wearing a “flimsy” jacket and gloves. He said he first encountered the suspect in a bathroom in the Barus-Holly Building about two hours before the shooting, was in close proximity and “locked eyes” with him. After this encounter in the bathroom, the suspect exited the building into the parking lot.

“John” decided to follow the suspect along Manning Street and near the RI Historical Society saw him approach a gray or silver sedan which flashed its lights as if being unlocked by a key fob, but when the suspect saw “John” turned and walked away from the vehicle. “John“ looked inside and saw two “fanny pack” bags on the floor, then remained in the area, seeing the suspect return repeatedly but turn away each time he saw “John” in what was described as “a game of cat and mouse.” Finally, on George Street, the suspect began running away and “John” ran after him, “speed-walked” past him, and turned around to confront the suspect, saying “Your car is back there. Why are you circling the block?” The suspect then said, in what “John” said seemed an Hispanic accent, “I don’t know you from nobody. Why are you harassing me?” After that, the suspect walked back toward the car and “John” broke off.

Subsequently on Dec 17 at 11:12pm EST, ‘John” posted again on Reddit: 

The following is all I will say regarding the matter. This evening I spoke to Providence Police, the Rhode Island State Police and I imagine the FBI were listening in another room. They know who I am. I am not the individual posted in the recent round of photos. I wish that individual Godspeed and if they have yet to come forward I strongly encourage them to do so. All the law enforcement personnel that I interacted with today were extremely professional and worked hard to really put me at ease. Respectfully, I have said all I have to say on the matter to the right people. If any follow up is needed the right people know how to reach out to me. Though it is certainly your right to try, any news media attempting to reach out to me will not receive a response. This is a pseudo-PSA and my participation in the comments will be limited to upvoting reasonable takes. Thank you for your time and let’s hope the POI is apprehended soon so the authorities can get to the bottom of this. Hopefully you all are able to enjoy the holidays with your family and loved ones but if you are not may the following days treat you kindly.

Once the police had the location and description of the car, a Nissan Sentra, they were able to use surveillance camera video from the RI Historical Society and city-operated Flock traffic cameras to determine the plate number, which led to the Alamo Rent-a-Car office on Boston, which had identifying data for the lessee including financial information and surveillance video of the rental transaction on Dec 1 at 11:36am. The first hit of the plate on the Flock readers was later that same day at 5:50pm, at the intersection of Camp Street and Doyle Avenue. The Flock readers detected the plate a total of 14 times.

With this financial information, authorities determined that the suspect had rented a locker at Extra Space Storage in Salem, NH. When the FBI SWAT team arrived, the suspect was already dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had the rental car and two handguns, one found near his thigh and the other near his leg.

As of early Friday morning, authorities said they do not know a motive for either crime and do not know why the suspect targeted Brown University or his former classmate from Portugal.

Strong public support has been expressed on social media for giving “John” the $50,000 reward offered by the FBl.

Michael Bilow of Motif attended the 3:30pm court hearing and is reporting based on his personal observations.

At a hearing in US District Court in Providence on the afternoon of Thu, Nov 6, Judge John J. McConnell Jr seemed incredulous that the option in his Oct 31 order to make partial instead of full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (formerly “food stamp”) payments for November, intended to speed up the process and get those partial benefits to recipients by no later than Wed, Nov 5, actually introduced delays that the government contended could add weeks or months. Because the federal government provides money to state governments for further disbursal to recipients, and states never before needed to calculate partial payments, the practical effect was to introduce substantial procedural delay in making benefits available for use, the judge was told.

The failure of Congress to authorize spending in the new fiscal year that began Oct 1 has resulted in a shutdown of the federal government, including monthly US Department of Agriculture (USDA) SNAP payments due Nov 1 to about 42 million recipients.

“The administration was required under this Court’s Order to immediately make the full payment for November SNAP benefits considering the finding of irreparable harm that would occur. And just to be clear, irreparable harm means harm to families, elderly, children, and others that cannot be undone. The evidence shows that people will go hungry, food pantries will be overburdened, and needless suffering will occur. That’s what irreparable harm here means. Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation’s history. This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided,” the judge said from the bench.

Kristin Bateman of the Democracy Forward Foundation, arguing for the plaintiffs, used only three of her allotted 15 minutes of argument. “This court’s order gave defendants a choice. They could fully fund November SNAP benefits, or they could come up with a plan to partially fund those benefits using the contingency funds, so long as that plan allowed for expeditious and timely payment to the beneficiaries who rely on SNAP for food, and so long as that plan was not arbitrary and capricious The defendants have not done that. By their own admission, their plan will mean that in some states, beneficiaries don’t get the money they need for food for weeks or even months, and the reasons they have given for making that choice are facially implausible. They say that they are doing that to conserve needed funding for child nutrition programs like school lunches, but tapping into those funds now to fully fund the November SNAP benefits will not take needed money away from those child nutrition programs unless the government shutdown lasts until next June. Basing a decision on such a highly unlikely set of events is not reasoned decision making, and it’s particularly unreasonable because the defendants have not explained why they would choose to let 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, go hungry now, in order to guard against the extreme outside chance that come June, there won’t be enough money to fund child nutrition programs,” Bateman argued.

“In fact, the record shows that conserving money for child nutrition programs is not the reason; that’s a pretext. What defendants are really trying to do is to leverage people’s hunger to gain partisan political advantage in the shutdown fight. In these particular facts and circumstances, the defendants choice not to fully fund November SNAP benefits is arbitrary and capricious, and, in these particular facts and circumstances, the court should order defendants to provide that full funding immediately. It’s already six days into November. People are waiting for the assistance they need to be able to afford food, and there’s no more time to wait. So we would ask that the court enforce its existing order by requiring immediate release of the funds necessary to make full November SNAP payments,” Bateman said.

As a result, the judge issued a new order that the federal government make full rather than partial payments for November, and that this be done within one day on Fri, Nov 7. The judge held that in addition to contingency funds already consumed to make partial payments, the necessary funds could be drawn from reserves under Section 32 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935, derived from 30% of customs receipts on imports from the prior calendar year, and therefore constitute a permanent statutory appropriation by Congress.

“The administration erroneously and unintentionally conflates Section 32 funds and the child nutrition programs by referring to them in tandem, as though they were one and the same. In essence, they erroneously claim that Section 32 funds are to be used exclusively to fund the child nutrition program, but that is incorrect,” the judge said from the bench. “While much of this funding has been appropriated for the child nutrition program, USDA has statutory authority under 7 USC §2257 to authorize transfers of these funds interchangeably for the ‘miscellaneous expenses of the work of any bureau, division, or office of the Department of Agriculture.’”

The judge noted that USDA had previously used Section 32 funds to keep the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program running, undermining any legal objection to doing it for SNAP, and drawing $4 billion from Section 32 reserves to fully fund SNAP for November would still leave more than $19 billion in the fund. While the government contends that drawing from Section 32 reserves could put 29 million children at risk of there being insufficient funds for child nutrition programs traditionally funded this way, the judge said that the evidence was that would not happen unless the government shutdown extended past May 2026, which he deemed “implausible,” and if Congress did not act to restore SNAP funding and replenish the account. “More importantly, without SNAP funding for the month of November, 16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry. This should never happen in America. In fact, it’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here,” the judge said from the bench.

Judge McConnell repeatedly referenced a Truth Social post by President Donald Trump, “The president stated his intent to defy the Court Order when he said, quote, SNAP payments will be given only when the government opens, unquote.” (What Trump actually wrote was, “SNAP BENEFITS… will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”) The judge at the end of the hearing, which lasted less than a half-hour, returned to this point, “The defendant’s stated desire to conserve funding for the child nutrition program is entirely pretextual given the numerous statements made in recent weeks by the President and his administration officials who admit to withholding full SNAP benefits for political reasons.”

Despite outright finding that the government claims were “pretextual,” a blunt way of accusing the government of lying, the judge was careful to acknowledge the difficult if not impossible position the attorney representing USDA, Tyler Becker, found himself in: “I’m not accusing you, and I don’t think the plaintiffs are either, of bad faith in it, or of acting inappropriate. I think what the plaintiffs are saying – I mean, they’ve not, and I think rightly so, haven’t asked for contempt – what they’re merely saying is: enforce the order that is plain and straightforward, and clearly the government didn’t read the order in its plain language in that regard…”

Indeed, the judge noted that, as federal employees, Becker and the Court staff needed to hold the hearing were all working without pay.

Judge McConnell in Providence appeared so angry that, without any actual request from the government, he preempted such a request and said from the bench, “The request for a stay of this decision, either a stay or an administrative stay, is denied. People have gone without for too long. Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable.” Such a stay, which would delay the effect of his order, is relatively ordinary if the case is appealed, as he clearly expected.

After the close of the hearing, the court issued a 27-page written opinion detailing the terms of its order. Almost immediately, the government filed a notice of appeal to the First Circuit in Boston.

The case in Providence at the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island is Rhode Island State Council of Churches et al. v. Rollins et al. (1:25-cv-00569). The case in Boston at the US Court of Appeal for the First Circuit is Rhode Island State Council of Churches et al. v. Rollins et al. (25-2089).

UPDATE: The First Circuit in the early evening of Fri, Nov 7, denied the government request for an administrative stay of the lower court order, effectively allowing the payment of full SNAP benefits by the end of the day. The government then asked the US Supreme Court for an emergency stay, which was granted by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her capacity as the duty justice assigned to handle emergencies from the First Circuit, which she granted late that night, providing that full SNAP benefits need not be paid until 48 hours after the First Circuit makes its decision, allowing time for a further appeal by either side to the Supreme Court.

UPDATE: The First Circuit at 11:49pm, Nov 9, issued a 29-page opinion in favor of the lower court order that full SNAP benefits be paid.

See our coverage of the SNAP crisis:

• “SNAP Benefits Must Be Paid, PVD Federal Court Rules: Contingency funds must be used despite government objections”, by Michael Bilow, Oct 31, 2025.

• “SNAP (Food Stamps) Emergency: RI announces support during federal shutdown”, by Michael Bilow, Oct 29, 2025.