A 24-year-old man who authorities apprehended in connection with the Brown University mass shooting was released from custody and the real gunman is still at large, authorities announced during a surprise press conference late Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Erickson<\/a>\u00a0was cuffed just before dawn on Sunday at a Hampton Inn hotel near Brown University \u2014 but now investigators are saying they had the wrong guy.<\/p>\n Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha explained that it was \u201cdifficult\u201d to develop evidence and track down leads in the immediate aftermath of the shooting Saturday, in which two students were killed<\/a>\u00a0and another nine injured.<\/p>\n A monitor shows security camera footage of what police say is the Brown University shooting suspect walking along Hope Street after leaving the scene of the shooting. Providence Police\/X<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what these investigations look like. Sometimes you head in one direction, sometimes you regroup and go in another,\u201d Neronha said.<\/p>\n One of the leads they developed led them to Erickson, who authorities only referred to as a \u201cperson of interest.\u201d Neronha said that there was only \u201csome degree of evidence\u201d that led them to Erickson, but said their investigation \u201cnow points in a different direction.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s fair to say that there\u2019s no basis to consider him a person of interest, and that\u2019s why he\u2019s being released. We still have a lot of steps to take in this case,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The gunman, who has yet to be identified, burst into an economics class\u2019 final review session and opened fire. He was armed with a handgun and shot off more than 40 .9mm rounds<\/a> before fleeing the scene.<\/p>\n Witnesses said that they heard the shooter shouting something indiscernible while he was firing at the class.<\/p>\n Erickson originally told authorities he was in his hotel room all day Saturday, CNN reported.<\/p>\n Officials never formally identified Erickson as the person of interest they had in custody, but his name was leaked to multiple media outlets, including The Post.<\/p>\n Neronha criticized those who \u201cleaked [information] to the public\u201d and recognized it would be difficult \u201cto put that back in the bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n Members of the FBI Evidence Response Team work the scene, collect evidence, and mark the area with evidence markers at Brown University in Providence, RI, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. Kyle Mazza\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Passers-by walk past crime scene tape at an entrance to Brown University, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Providence, R.I., following the Saturday, Dec. 13, shooting at the university. AP<\/p>\n Providence Mayor Brett Smiley assured that they would keep a heightened security presence on and around campus so people could feel \u201ccomfort\u201d while trying to find a sense of normalcy in the aftermath of the shooting.<\/p>\n Smiley added that officials see no reason to reinstate a shelter-in-place order since Brown University has not received any credible threats since the shooting.<\/p>\n Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee said that he recently spoke with FBI Director Kash Patel, who is \u201ccommitted to bringing the resources of the federal government into this case.\u201d<\/p>\n The FBI opened a tip line on its\u00a0website<\/a>. Officials said they are still searching for additional video evidence of the suspect, and they still believe the person seen in the\u00a0footage released on Saturday<\/a>\u00a0is the assailant they are after.<\/p>\n The footage showed the gunman walking calmly down a street near campus, dressed in all black with his face covered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 24-year-old man who authorities apprehended in connection with the Brown University mass shooting was released from custody…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[36116,36118,19085,7459,9,11,10,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-70775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-brown-university","9":"tag-brown-university-shooting-2025","10":"tag-investigations","11":"tag-mass-shootings","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}