(NewsNation) — Anonymous tips from a man identified by police as “John” played a crucial role in helping authorities track down the suspected gunman in last week’s mass shooting at Brown University, who is also believed to have fatally shot an MIT professor two days after the first attack.
The days-long manhunt for the suspect ended Thursday night when authorities said Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, was found dead in a storage facility in New Hampshire from an apparent suicide.
According to a Providence police affidavit, multiple eyewitnesses reported seeing the alleged shooter stalking the Brown University campus as early as Thanksgiving. A custodian claims they saw him enter the building where the shooting happened on December 1, nearly two weeks before the attack.
Redditor provides police with key info
A man identified only as “John” in court documents posted crucial information on Reddit that helped investigators identify the suspect.
“I’m being dead serious. Police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” John posted to Reddit before speaking to police. “That was the car he was driving.”
According to police, John ran into the suspect at the building on Brown’s campus shortly before the shooting happened, and had observed him acting strangely near the car.
After what John described as a “game of cat and mouse,” where the suspect changed direction each time they crossed paths, John confronted him.
“Your car is back there. Why are you circling the block?” John asked. The suspect replied, “I don’t know you from anybody,” and repeatedly asked, “Why are you harassing me?”
John later met with police, identified the suspect in surveillance images and led investigators to the Nissan’s rental records, confirming Neves Valente as the suspect.
“He was, in fact, critical to this, and certainly everyone in Providence owes this individual a debt of gratitude,” Brett Smiley, the mayor of Providence, told CNN on Friday morning.
Police haven’t released any other details about John or his affiliation with the university. It remains unclear whether he’ll receive the $50,000 reward the FBI had offered for information about the shooting.
US pauses Diversity Immigrant Visa program
The Trump administration is suspending a green card lottery program that authorities said Neves Valente used to enter the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on social media late Thursday that, at the president’s direction, she ordered the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, or DV1, “to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
Authorities are unaware of any criminal record held by Neves Valente in the U.S., and a motive for the shootings remains unclear.
NewsNation’s Taylor Delandro contributed to this report.