Brown, MIT shootings may have stemmed from suspect’s failures, fixation on scientist’s success: report

Motive remains unclear following death of Brown, MIT gunman Retired NYPD inspector Paul Mauro joins 'Fox & Friends Weekend' to discuss the unknown motive of the shooter suspected of killing two Brown University students and an MIT professor after being found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit. New details are emerging about the suspected gunman in the killings of an MIT scientist and two Brown University students, with a top Portuguese nuclear fusion official telling the Daily Mail the suspect may have fixated on the victim as a symbol of success he never achieved. Authorities say Nuno Loureiro, 47, a world-renowned fusion-energy researcher and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was shot on Dec. 15 and died hours later. Police believe the gunman was Claudio Neves-Valente, 48, a onetime physics prodigy from Portugal who later died by suicide after a multistate manhunt. The case widened dramatically after authorities identified Neves-Valente as the suspect in a mass shooting at Brown University days earlier. Police say Neves-Valente opened fire on Dec. 13 inside a campus building, killing two students and injuring nine others. Investigators later confirmed he was also responsible for the Dec. 15 fatal shooting of Loureiro at his Brookline, Massachusetts, home. Neves-Valente was a Portuguese national and former Brown student who studied physics from the fall of 2000 through the spring of 2001 before withdrawing from the program by 2003, according to Brown University President Christina Paxson. She emphasized that Neves-Valente had no recent affiliation with the university at the time of the campus shooting. MIT PROFESSOR SHOT DEAD IN BROOKLINE HOME, MASSACHUSETTS STATE POLICE LAUNCH HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts released this image showing the man identified in deadly shootings at both Brown University in Rhode Island and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. (Justice Department) According to the Daily Mail, Dr. Bruno Goncalves, president of Portugal’s Institute of Plasma and Nuclear Fusion, said Neves-Valente did not maintain any known relationship with Loureiro in the decades after they studied together there, underscoring that the attack was not the result of an ongoing rivalry or dispute. Instead, Goncalves said Neves-Valente may have fixated on what Loureiro had come to represent. "The strongest theory is that Claudio saw Nuno as a symbol of the academic and professional success that he himself had failed to achieve," Goncalves said. BILLIONAIRES ON BROWN UNIVERSITY'S BOARD SILENT AMID CAMPUS MASSACRE He stressed that the resentment was one-sided and did not exist during their student years. "It’s not a rivalry that existed at the time," Goncalves said, adding that it "developed later." Goncalves also rejected claims that institutional pressure or academic culture bore responsibility for the violence, telling the Daily Mail that Portugal’s elite technical universities provide psychological support and that many graduates successfully transition into other careers. NEIGHBORS OF SLAIN MIT PROFESSOR STUNNED BY KILLING MIT professor Nuno Loureiro was shot at this Brookline apartment building. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital) "It was not the course," he said. "It was how...

Preview: ~500 words