As police investigating the mass shooting at Brown University scrambled to find a suspect, they received a tip that in the words of Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha “blew this case right open.” And it came via the social media site Reddit.
On Wednesday, investigators were on their fourth day of the search and remained unable to identify the suspect they had seen on multiple videos. Then, according to an affidavit drawn up by Rhode Island prosecutors, they were sent an anonymous tip: A post on the r/Providence sub-Reddit that described a man walking near a parked car on the day of the shooting, three blocks from where the shooting occurred.
“I’m being dead serious,” a Reddit poster wrote, in part. “The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving.”
The police, it turns out, did just that.
The post was published on Monday. But when investigators saw it two days later, one detail especially piqued their interest, they wrote in the affidavit. To that point, videos released by police seeking the public’s help had not featured the car described in the Reddit post, or referenced that it had Florida license plates.
“Based on the tip,” a Providence police detective wrote, “investigators reviewed the surveillance videos further and located a grey/blue Nissan sedan.”
While canvassing the East Side neighborhood near where the shooting took place, police found security footage that depicted a man interacting with the suspect they had earlier identified. This man turned out to be “John,” as he is known in the prosecutors’ affidavit. Police would later learn that “John” was the Reddit poster who first flagged the car.
Police then put out a call asking for “John” to come forward. Hours later, he approached Providence Police officers and agreed to tell his story.
“John” and the man who would become the suspect in the mass shooting had gotten into an altercation, “John” told police, on George Street near the Rhode Island Historical Society before the shooting took place. “John” estimated he stood two feet from the suspect.
“John” noticed the man unlocking and locking a car, which he described in the Reddit post and to police. Investigators searched a database of automated cameras that capture license plates and found 14 hits in the area.
From that footage, they obtained a license plate. And then discovered that vehicle had been rented from an Alamo rental car facility in downtown Boston on Dec. 1.
When detectives showed “John” images of the car, he recognized it.
“Holy shit,” he said. “That might be it.”
Police obtained car rental records from Alamo and found that a man named Claudio Manuel Neves Valente provided a Florida drivers license to rent the car. That man, authorities said Thursday night, is the one who killed two people and wounded 9 others at Brown, and killed an MIT professor in Massachusetts.
Authorities tracked him to a storage locker in Salem, New Hampshire, on Thursday. He was found dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.