(PROVIDENCE, R.I.) — The mayor of Providence is asking FBI Director Kash Patel to give the $50,000 reward offered for information in the Brown University mass shooting to a local tipster who provided a detailed account of the suspect.
The man, only identified by authorities in a criminal complaint as “John,” provided the Providence Police Department with the most detailed account of the suspect, later identified as 48-year-old Carlos Neves Valente, and the gray Nissan Sentra he was driving — first on a Reddit post and later to authorities.
“One individual amongst those who provided tips stands out above the rest: John,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said in the letter obtained by ABC News. “As discussed with the media last night, John is no less than a hero. His bravery, selflessness and stewardship on behalf of his community went far beyond what anyone could ever hope from a tip. I believe that our community is breathing easier today because of the extraordinary assistance John provided to our law enforcement agencies. I am writing to you today to request that the entirety of the $50,000 reward be issued to this incredible Providence neighbor.”
The FBI previously said there was a $50,000 reward for any information leading to the suspect.
In the letter, Smiley said law enforcement worked for 130 hours straight to find and identify the gunman — but that John was pivotal to the investigation.
“He blew this case right open,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told reporters at a news conference on Thursday night. “He blew it open.”
It all began unfolding three days after the shooting when an anonymous source tipped off authorities to a post John had made on the website Reddit, according to the Rhode Island criminal complaint detailing the evidence against the suspected shooter.
“I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” John wrote in the post, describing “odd” behavior by the suspect.
After noticing the man they believed to be John interacting with the suspect in surveillance footage, police released images of him and asked for help in identifying him on Wednesday. Later that day, John approached a Providence police officer and said he was the person they were looking for.
John told detectives that he first encountered the suspect in the bathroom of Brown University’s Barus & Holley building in the hours before the Dec. 13 shooting and was suspicious, according to the affidavit.
John followed Neves Valente outside, where he said he observed the suspect approaching his car, the affidavit noted. The suspect and John would lock eyes as Neves Valente repeatedly walked around the block, in what John would describe “as a game of cat and mouse,” according to the affidavit.
The tip and surveillance video, along with the use of license-plate reader technology, led investigators to a car rental agency in Massachusetts where Neves Valente had rented the Nissan under his own name, authorities said.
Investigators tracked Neves Valente to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, on the border with Massachusetts, where they found his body inside.
Authorities said Neves Valente burst into a lecture hall on the Brown campus on Dec. 13 and opened fire, killing two students and wounding nine others, before fleeing the scene. Two days later, he fatally shot MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in the foyer of his apartment building in Brookline, Massachusetts, according to authorities.
Officials haven’t released a motive, but Neves Velente briefly attended Brown University in the early 2000s and studied in the same prestigious physics engineering program in the 1990s with Loureiro in their native Portugal.
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