A local Massachusetts police department is applauding itself for playing a “significant role” in tracking down the vehicle that the accused Brown University mass shooter allegedly drove to New Hampshire as he tried to evade authorities.
The Waltham Police Department says its detectives “identified critical information” that helped move the multistate investigation forward and “contributed to locating the suspect’s vehicle in Salem, New Hampshire.”
Authorities found the suspect, Claudio Neves-Valente, 48, dead in a Salem storage facility the evening of Dec. 18, five days after he allegedly killed Brown University students Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook.
Neves-Valente is also accused of shooting and murdering Nuno Loureiro at the MIT professor’s Brookline home the night of Dec. 15, two days after the Brown shooting, which injured nine other students.
“Authorities learned early in the investigation that the suspect had been operating a rental vehicle with Florida license plates,” the Waltham Police Department stated in a Facebook post on Christmas Eve. “Using Waltham’s Flock Safety camera system, Waltham Detectives were able to identify a Maine plate the suspect used to cover the Florida plates. There was no active registration attached to this Maine plate.”
“This information helped map the suspect’s route from Brookline into Waltham and north toward Interstate 95,” the department continued, “which aligned with intelligence identifying a storage unit rented in Salem, New Hampshire. The vehicle was later located at that facility, where the suspect was ultimately found.”
In an affidavit supporting an application for a criminal complaint, FBI Special Agent Bryce Ferrera detailed Neves-Valente’s alleged presence in Massachusetts and his travels from Brown University to Brookline.
Around 9:03 p.m. on Dec. 15, a blue/grey Nissan Sentra, matching the same make and model of Neves-Valente’s “target vehicle,” was observed in Waltham, after a surveillance camera captured the car traveling in Boston just 20 minutes earlier.
“While in Massachusetts,” Ferrera wrote in his affidavit, “the TARGET VEHICLE was observed to have a Maine license plate affixed to its rear bumper. Maine law enforcement has determined that the license plate is unregistered and not valid.”
Officials in Providence have credited a homeless man for posting information on Reddit that helped investigators find Neves-Valente. They are also pressing the feds to award the man with $50,000.
Authorities received a tip on Dec. 16 from an anonymous source about a Reddit post on the Providence subreddit, according to documents.
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 of 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,” an affidavit reads.
The Waltham Police Department says its police chief received an email from Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey, who expressed his “appreciation for the department’s efforts.”
“This investigation involved broad cooperation among Brookline Police, Massachusetts State Police, Watertown Police, federal partners, and participating local departments,” Waltham PD stated in its Facebook post. “The Waltham Police Department is proud of the work performed by our Detectives, whose professionalism, attention to detail, and effective use of technology contributed meaningfully to a complex and fast moving case.”
“Their efforts,” it added, “demonstrate the importance of interagency cooperation, timely information sharing, and modern investigative tools in supporting public safety.
Brown University has placed its campus police chief on leave as the Rhode Island Ivy League school reviews its security policies after the Dec. 13 mass shooting.
