Candles are lit by framed photos of shooting victims Mukhammad Aziz Amurzokov and Ella Cook at a makeshift memorial near Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, on Monday night.
Photo: Bing Guan/AFP via Getty Images
On Saturday, a gunman opened fire in a lecture hall at Brown University in Rhode Island, killing two people and injuring nine others during the height of exam season at the Ivy League institution. Three days later, the manhunt for the shooter continues, while Providence and the university community try to come to terms with the violent incident. Here are the latest developments.
They still haven’t identified the person of interest seen in all the video footage police have released over the past few days. From WPRI’s summary of tonight’s press conference:
Colonel Perez indicated the person of interest was captured on video in the neighborhood at 10:30 a.m. Saturday — about 5½ hours before the shooting — and believe he was casing the area. Perez noted criminals often scout locations days or weeks before an attack, and asked nearby residents to check any security or Tesla footage going back at least a week.
Officials also worked to tamp down speculation circulating on social media about various theories regarding the motives of the shooter, the potential identity of the shooter, or a link to the killing of an MIT professor Monday.
Law enforcement officials in Massachusetts have also said that there is no known connection between the Brown shooting and the murder of MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro in Brookline.
State attorney general Peter Neronha told MS NOW in an interview that authorities will be releasing an “enhanced photo” of the person of interest on Tuesday. Neronha said the photo is separate from the images that have been shared already and emerged from the grid-by-grid canvass of local businesses and residences that law enforcement has undertaken in the past day.
“We developed a lot of additional video yesterday. But you’ve got to dump it all in and you gotta analyze it. We have a good picture of the gunman’s route, but it’s not complete yet,” Neronha said. “So, putting that all together has yielded a image that we’ll be releasing, different from the ones that have already been seen, that will be enhanced by the FBI and we’re going to put that out relatively soon.”
WRPI 12 reports that there will be a 5 p.m. briefing on the status of the Brown University shooting investigation.
The Boston Globe goes deep on the term “person of interest” and the role it plays in ongoing investigations:
The phrase “person of interest” is used by police who are “hedging their bets” that the person they detained may eventually become a suspect in a crime without actually implicating the person, said Ed Davis, Boston’s police commissioner during the Boston Marathon bombings.
“It’s a cautionary statement,” Davis said.
But that caution appeared to have its limits. Davis described the individual detained in Coventry and later released as a scenario that happens when police make “a rush to judgment.” However, Davis said it’s important investigators also work quickly.
“You really need to… go at it with a sense of urgency,” he said. “That’s one of the difficulties here. You have a murderer that is free and a community that’s terrified.”
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced plans to honor Ella Cook in her home state this week:
In a CNN interview Monday evening, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha was asked about FBI director Kash Patel touting the discovery of a person of interest who was ultimately released and why that information was released so prematurely. The veteran prosecutor was blunt.
“I think because people who aren’t familiar or aren’t experienced in investigations got over their skis,” he said.
Neronha said he’s been contacted by reporters throughout this investigation and that he was always cautious about the information he provided. “Look, I’ve been U.S. attorney or AG now for fifteen years. I was very careful with my words. And the reason for that is you don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver,” he said.
The attorney general said that evidence can point to a specific person during one point during an investigation, which happened here, but that you have to “run that lead to ground” with the information you have.
“But I think this is why I have tried to, frankly, exert more influence over this in the last 24 to 36 hours because it’s really important that career prosecutors and career law enforcement officers—-people who have been in these situations before—- talk about what we have and where we’re going,” Neronha said.
Authorities haven’t given any new updates on the investigation or whether they have any additional leads.
The Boston Globe reports:
In the hours after the Saturday afternoon shooting that killed two Brown students and injured nine others and the manhunt that followed, those who live and work around the university’s borders said they were left in the dark about the crisis unfolding around them.
Business owners and residents said they received delayed or no notification from the city, even though many said they had signed up for emergency alerts through the 311 system. The city also earlier this year rolled out an updated wireless emergency alert system that can transmit information to cellphones in a designated crisis zone — the system used for Amber alerts for missing children — but it doesn’t appear that Providence officials sought to activate it after the shooting.
Emergency alert experts said that with a school shooting and a suspect still at large, a wireless alert, which has no opt-in requirement, should have been issued, as it has the ability to reach the widest audience. “It probably was warranted, given how dire the situation was and given that the person wasn’t found,” said Jeannette Sutton, an associate professor who specializes in disaster and emergency communication at the University at Albany, State University of New York. “People who are in danger do deserve to know that they’re in danger,” she said.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez shared newly-obtained video footage and photos of the alleged suspect, saying that they’re following a new lead in the days-long investigation.
Per Perez, the images are from Saturday around 2 p.m., a few hours before the shooting. In the footage, the suspect can be seen walking in a residential area. For the first time, the images include the suspect’s face which appears to be covered by a black face mask.
“We’re asking the public for assistance to be able to identify this individual,” he said.
A reporter asked Providence Mayor Brett Smiley about an alarm installed by Brown University that reportedly did not send off a warning to the school community about the active shooter and why that was the case, noting that no representatives were at today’s press conference.
Smiley said they would have to direct that question to Brown officials. “This is not a decision that the city of Providence or any of the other law enforcement partners that you see behind me can trigger that alarm. I don’t know the answer to that,” he said.
But the mayor defended the university and said it has been a “close collaborator” in this investigation and that there’s nothing to read into their absence at the briefing.
The FBI’s flyer describes the suspect as “male, approximately 5’8” with a stocky build.”
Ted Docks, the FBI agent-in-charge of the Boston field office, announced that the agency is now offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator whom he said is considered “armed and dangerous.”
Docks said the FBI is still continuing its work in the Providence area, noting that its evidence response teams are still on campus and agents from Quantico’s lab are “documenting the trajectories of the bullets to reconstruct the scene.”
“We are asking the public to be patient as we continue to run down every lead so we can get victims, survivors and their families and all of you the answers you deserve,” he said.
Our Cut colleague Andrea González-Ramírez notes how far-right conspiracy theories focused on one of the victims of the Brown University shooting have been emerging:
Far-right figures have fixated on Cook’s death in particular to claim that the shooter sought to harm conservatives, even though investigators have not identified a suspect. “I’m told she was allegedly targeted for her conservative beliefs, hunted, and killed in cold blood,” William Donahue, president of the College Republicans of America, said on X, offering no evidence supporting his allegation. Far-right podcast host Benny Johnson also claimed without proof in an X post that the shooting appeared to be a targeted attack, saying, “The left’s violent rhetoric has turned into nationwide violence. If we don’t crush this threat now, we lose everything. It’s only escalating.” Chaya Raichik, who runs the far-right social media account LibsofTikTok, quote-tweeted an unconfirmed report on X claiming the attack was planned against Cook and added that her death meant it was “open season on Conservatives now.” Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, New York City Councilwoman Vicky Paladino, and podcast host CJ Pearson amplified these allegations, too.
Read the rest here.
Speaking from the Oval Office Monday, President Trump said the investigation into the Brown University shooting was “moving along,” but that the shooter’s motive was still unknown. “Hopefully they’re going to capture this animal,” he said.
But when a reporter asked why the FBI has had struggled to identify the shooter, the president seemed to point the finger at Brown itself. “You’ll really have to ask the school a little bit more about because this was a school problem. They had their own guards, they had their own police, they had their own everything,” Trump said.
He continued, “The FBI will do a good job, but they came in after the fact.”
There have been several recent instances of long manhunts following high-profile shootings around the country.
A little over a year ago, it took five days to apprehend Luigi Mangione, who allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan on December 4, 2024. Images of Mangione were widely circulated amid a national manhunt, but he wasn’t caught until someone saw him at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, thought he resembled the suspected gunman, and alerted a McDonald’s employee who then contacted police.
In June, it took nearly two days to catch Vance Boelter after he allegedly impersonated a police officer and assassinated Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband and attempted to murder State Senator John Hoffman and his wife.
In August, it took a seven-day manhunt to apprehend Michael Paul Brown, who allegedly shot and killed four people at a bar in the small town of Anaconda, Montana, then fled and evaded police by hiding in forests in the sparsely populated outskirts of the town.
In September, the 22-year-old man who allegedly assassinated Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson, was able to evade law enforcement for 33 hours following the shooting and was only apprehended after his parents convinced him to turn himself in. Hours after the shooting, after authorities detained a person of interest, FBI director Kash Patel announced that the manhunt was over, but the person of interest was released soon after.
Rhode Island attorney general Peter Neronha told ABC News that the person of interest who was initially detained and then released has been “effectively cleared.”
“The evidence that we have, the scientific evidence that we have available to us, after it was analyzed, made clear that this was not someone who should be detained in connection with this case,” he said. “So we released him and then moved on, looking at other evidence and pursuing other leads pointing at additional potential individuals.”
Following the release of the sole person of interest, the Providence Police Department reiterated its request for the public to share any pertinent information about the shooting with law enforcement:
In a subsequent post, the department said officers are reaching out to local businesses and residences, seeking any available camera footage. WPRI 12 has video of law enforcement going door-to-door in Providence:
The Providence Police Department has released new video of a person of interest in the Brown University shooting. In the clip, a figure dressed in black can be seen walking down a city sidewalk:
The Washington Post reports that Saturday’s shooting has prompted conversation about the safety of Brown University’s open campus:
Brown, unlike some other urban universities, is not sealed off by fences or other barriers; it’s accessible to anyone who wants to walk onto the Providence campus. While some schools, such as Harvard and Columbia, locked their gates and restricted access to campus after contentious protests over the Israel-Gaza war, Brown remained open.
Rob Kilfoyle, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators and director of public safety and emergency management at Humber Polytechnic in Toronto, said that while best practices suggest sending a first alert five to 10 minutes after learning of an emergency, university officials have been more careful to verify reports after a series of shooter hoaxes, or swatting incidents, earlier this fall. And the first priority is to alert law enforcement so they can get to the scene, he said, before officials issue a public warning.
Colleges must balance the need for security with the educational mission, Kilfoyle said. “That’s probably one of the toughest things that we have to do in campus public safety, is find that equilibrium between not wanting it to seem oppressive and too restrictive, but also providing sufficient security.”
Vice-President J.D. Vance weighed in on the Brown University shooting, offering condolences for the two students who were killed. Vance noted Ella Cook’s role in her local chapter of the College Republicans, writing on social media, “It takes special courage to lead an organization of conservatives on a left wing campus, and I am very sorry our country has lost one of its bright young stars. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord.”
The vice-president also acknowledged the loss of MuhammadAziz Umurzakov, calling him “a brilliant young man who dreamed of being a surgeon.”
“Say a prayer for everyone affected by this terrible tragedy, right before Christmas,” Vance wrote.
So far, FBI director Patel has yet to comment publicly on the release of the investigation’s sole person of interest after publicizing his detention.
On Monday, Patel’s social media has largely been focused on the agency’s newly revealed work foiling an alleged New Year’s Day terror plot.
Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin and incoming governor Abigail Spanberger offered their condolences for the victims in Saturday’s shooting, noting that MuhammadAziz Umurzakov recently graduated from a local high school in the state:
Providence mayor Brett Smiley said that there’s an “enhanced police presence” on Brown’s campus and throughout the city of Providence, but said there have been no additional credible threats made to the community.
“Ever since the initial shooting occurred, that first call that came in at 4:05 p.m. a day and a half ago, we have not received a single credible call for threat of violence or any sort of information to believe that there is an ongoing threat in any specific, credible way,” he said on ABC News.
The Brown University shooting is not the first time that FBI director Patel’s handling of an investigation has come under fire.
Within hours of the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Patel took to social media to declare that the shooter was in custody. But Patel would later have to walk his statement back, writing that the person of interest was “released after an interrogation by law enforcement.” The alleged shooter, Tyler James Robinson, would later surrender himself to police one day after the shooting.
Rhode Island representative Seth Magaziner, who is an alum of Brown University, criticized the FBI’s handling of the investigation and hoped Patel and others would “take a lesson” from the example set by local officials.
“I give a lot of credit to our Rhode Island elected officials in not jumping the gun. They were careful to always call this person a person of interest, not a suspect,” Magaziner said, per the Providence Journal. “And that does stand in contrast to the president and the FBI director, who, similar to in the hours that followed the Charlie Kirk assassination, seemed to be very eager to break news before they’re confident whether it’s true or not.”
In an interview with ABC News, Smiley was asked if officials were “absolutely convinced” that the person of interest had nothing to do with the shooting.
“We’re not saying that definitively. What we’re saying is that after a review of the evidence that was gathered, it was determined that the person of interest needed to be released,” he said.
Smiley said that the authorities believe the person seen in the short video released by law enforcement is the suspect they’re seeking and that there currently isn’t any evidence that suggests that anyone else is involved.
Brown University remains open in the wake of the recent shooting, but the school provost informed the community Sunday that in-person fall exams as well as all remaining classes and projects for the semester have been cancelled. “In the immediate aftermath of these devastating events, we recognize that learning and assessment are significantly hindered in the short term and that many students and others will wish to depart campus,” Francis Doyle said in a statement. “Students are free to leave if they are able. Students who remain will have access to on-campus services and support.”
In an interview with ABC News, teaching assistant Joseph Oduro recounted the moment the unknown gunman burst into the room where he was holding a study session and opened fire:
“I immediately, when I saw him, I saw a gun,” Oduro told ABC News correspondent Whit Johnson in an interview on Sunday. “The gun was so big and long that I genuinely thought, like, okay, this is the end of the road for me.”
…
Oduro said the gunman was dressed in dark clothing from head to toe and appeared to be wearing something that was bulging from his chest, saying it could have been ammunition or a bulletproof vest. He said the gunman was completely covered except for his eyes and part of a hand.
“We made eye contact,” Oduro said. “I know he mumbled something, screamed something, I don’t know exactly what was said, but he entered the room and you could just see the panic in all the students’ eyes,” Oduro said. “I was standing in the front so as soon as he walked in, he immediately saw me and I immediately saw him.”
He said that as the gunfire erupted, he saw some students running out the door and others diving to the ground, “just whatever it takes to stay alive.”
Mia Tretta, 21, was shot in the 2019 mass shooting at Saugus High School, about 40 miles north of Los Angeles. A 16-year-old boy carried out that attack, killing two, including Tretta’s best friend, and injuring three before fatally shooting himself.
Zoe Weissman, 20, attended Westglades Middle School, adjacent to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when a former student opened fire, killing 17, in 2018.
Neither Tretta nor Weissman expected to experience a mass shooting again.
“No one in this country even assumes it’s going to happen to them,” Tretta said. “Once it happens to you, you assume or are told it will never happen again, and obviously that is not the case.”
Both of the people killed in the attack were young undergrads at Brown.
MuhammadAziz Umurzakov, 18, a freshman, reportedly graduated from Midlothian High in Chesterfield County, Virginia, in May. According to a GoFundMe created to support his family, the Uzbek American student “was incredibly kind, funny, and smart” and “had big dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon and helping people.”
Ella Cook, 19, was a sophomore who grew up in Mountain Brook, Alabama. She was the vice-president of the school’s College Republicans chapter.
Investigators appear to be back to square one, though they seem confident that the gunman acted alone, and that the video footage they have of a man dressed in black following the attack is of the shooter. Authorities also continue to stress that that Brown community members and Providence residents aren’t in any danger.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, law enforcement issued a thin description of the suspected shooter, describing them as a man dressed in black. The FBI urged the public to send in any information about the possible, publicizing surveillance footage showing a person of interest in dark clothing walking in the area of the shooting.
On Sunday, FBI director Kash Patel took to social media, detailing the agency’s efforts assisting the Brown University investigation and search for the gunman. Patel revealed that law enforcement had located a person of interest and taken them into custody at a hotel room in nearby Coventry, Rhode Island.
While officials did not publicly identify the man in question and he clearly wasn’t the confirmed suspect, law enforcement sources leaked information about the man’s identity to news outlets. Their subsequent news reports revealed his name and background.
But by late Sunday evening, the Providence Police Department announced that it would be releasing the person of interest with no charges.
During a press conference, Providence police chief Oscar Perez said the initial tip came through the department, but that the FBI ultimately followed it up.
“There was a tip that came in, just like we would take in any other tips and that one came in specifically identifying a person of interest which was this individual. And so our detectives, just like the others, got on it. But this specific one, it was actually picked up by the FBI and they followed through with it, and they ended up coming and locating this individual of interest,” Perez said.
State attorney general Peter Neronha said that such shifts in an investigation are not uncommon. “This is what these investigations look like. I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes you head in one direction and then you have to regroup and go in another. That’s exactly what has happened,” he said.
But Neronha acknowledged that it was “really unfortunate” that the person of interest’s identity was made public.
“It’s hard to put that back in the bottle. So we’re going to proceed very carefully here,” he said
According to officials, Brown University received a report of an active shooter at 4:05 p.m. on Saturday at the school’s engineering building.
Joseph Oduro, a teaching assistant and 21-year-old senior, told the New York Times that he was leading an economics study session that ended at 4 p.m. But as the students prepared to leave, there was a commotion from the hallway outside. “All of a sudden, we heard gunshots and people screaming,” Oduro told the Times. It was then that a masked gunman rushed into the room and opened fire.
The campus and the surrounding neighborhoods were placed on lockdown for hours after the incident as authorities responded and sought the gunman who fled the scene. Two people were killed and nine others wounded in the shooting.
