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Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez received loud applause during Friday night’s men’s college basketball game between Providence and Seton Hall.
The cheers came a day after the suspected shooter who fatally shot two Brown University students and an MIT professor earlier this week was found dead by local authorities in Salem, New Hampshire.
Smiley and Perez faced national scrutiny in the days after the shooting because their investigation included the detention of an innocent man who was mistaken for the suspect and questionable transparency with the public throughout the manhunt.
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The investigation lasted six days before authorities located the suspected shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot Thursday in a Salem storage unit.
The surrounding community spent days waiting for answers, with residents on edge after the school sent students home shortly after the shooting.
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Detectives were initially questioned a person of interest at an out-of-town hotel, but ruled him out as a suspect, authorities said.
The police spent days canvassing the neighborhood to surveillance video, which I found images of a person of interest – a stocky, masked figure who was approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall and walked with an odd gait.
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Neves Valente, 48, was a Portuguese national and studied physics at Brown from fall 2000 to spring 2001, according to Brown President Christina Paxson. But he took time off and finally retired in 2003.
Neves Valente’s motive has not been determined and remains under investigation.
