{"id":362841,"date":"2025-12-22T01:43:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/362841\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T01:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:43:11","slug":"suspected-brown-and-mit-professor-shooter-showed-signs-of-anger-former-friend-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/362841\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspected Brown and MIT professor shooter showed signs of anger, former friend says"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former friend of the man accused<\/a> in the deadly Brown University shooting<\/a> and and alleged\u00a0killing of an MIT professor<\/a> described him as a “socially awkward” person who showed signs of anger during their time on the campus in Providence, Rhode Island.<\/p>\n

Authorities said\u00a0Claudio Manuel Neves Valente<\/a> opened fired inside the Barus & Holley building at Brown University on Dec. 13, killing students\u00a0Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov<\/a>\u00a0and wounding nine others.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 15, investigators said that Valente went to Brookline, Massachusetts, and shot and killed\u00a0Nuno Loureiro<\/a>, an MIT nuclear science and engineering professor from Portugal.<\/p>\n

Former friend describes Claudio Manuel Neves Valente<\/p>\n

Valente, a Portuguese national whose last known residence was in Florida, was found dead in New Hampshire after a manhunt that lasted for days.<\/p>\n

Scott Watson is professor of physics at Syracuse University. He said he met the accused shooter when they both studied at Brown from 2000 to 2001.<\/p>\n

Watson described his former friends as “socially awkward.”<\/p>\n

“During his time at Brown, I was essentially his only friend. He was socially awkward, and so was I, which I think is why we connected. During orientation he was sitting alone, and I walked up and said hello. He was terse at first, but we eventually broke the ice and became close,” Watson told CBS News Boston by email.<\/p>\n

“Maybe the signs were always there,” friend says<\/p>\n

Watson said the alleged gunman often complained about moving to the United States, and about Brown. <\/p>\n

“He would say the classes were too easy \u2014 honestly, for him they were. He already knew most of the material and was genuinely impressive. I remember him getting irritated about the quality of food on campus, especially the lack of high-quality fish,” Watson said.<\/p>\n

Watson said the last time he spoke to his former friend was 2003. <\/p>\n

“He told me he was returning to Portugal, though it now appears that may not have been the case,” Watson said.<\/p>\n

Watson said that the suspected gunman could be kind, but added “he often became frustrated \u2014 sometimes angry \u2014 about courses, professors, and living conditions.”<\/p>\n

In a separate interview with CNN<\/a>, Watson said that he was surprised to learn his former friends was the accused shooter, but that in retrospect it made sense.<\/p>\n

“After a long day of conversations today, I realize maybe the signs were always there,” Watson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former friend of the man accused in the deadly Brown University shooting and and alleged\u00a0killing of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,90296,3,178830,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-362841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-brown-university","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-provincetown-news","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}