Valente burst into a lecture hall at Brown on December 13 and opened fire during an economics study session, killing freshman Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and sophomore Ella Cook, officials said. Two days later, Valente allegedly shot and killed Nuno Loureiro, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at Loureiro’s home near Boston. In 1995, Valente and Loureiro enrolled in an engineering programme at the Instituto Superior Técnico, a university in Portugal.
Police found Valente dead of a self-inflicted gunshot on December 18 at a New Hampshire storage facility.
In the videos, the transcript says, Valente said he had long “planned this”.
“It was, it was six months, man. Not six months, six semesters,” he said. “Uh … I had already planned this for a little more.”
Valente was vague about his motives and appeared unsure whether he wanted anyone to see his videos, the transcript shows. He said he was not interested in “being famous, having a legacy”. A native of Portugal, Valente said he had neither love nor hatred toward America but that coming to the United States “was a [expletive] mistake”.
“The only objective was to leave more or less on my own terms,” he said, and “it’s already long overdue”.
Valente said he doesn’t regret his actions, according to the transcript.
“I am not going to apologise, because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologised to me,” he said.
He denied reports on social media that he yelled “Allahu akbar”, which means “God is great” in Arabic, when he entered the lecture hall at Brown. He said he didn’t recall saying anything but may have let out an exclamation – he said it could have been “Oh, no!” – when he walked into the room and thought it was largely empty. He later realised students were hiding.
Though Valente said the attack had been in the works for some time, he suggested the immediate impetus was being confronted by someone – apparently a reference to the person police identified only as “John” who helped them track down the suspect.
Investigators previously said John noticed Valente in an on-campus bathroom about two hours before the shooting and thought he seemed suspicious. John followed Valente and saw him approach a car and then quickly walk away when he noticed someone was watching him, investigators said. Eventually, they said, John confronted Valente, who responded, “Why are you harassing me?”
Valente said in the video that he was surprised police did not track him down sooner.
“I honestly never thought it would take them so long to find me,” he said, according to the transcript.
On Monday, University President Christina Paxson said in a message to the campus community that the school would beef up security after the tragedy. She said Brown would add more cameras and has temporarily closed most of the engineering building, where the shooting occurred, while the school tries to secure some lecture halls and other spaces “behind new walls and emergency access doors”.
The university said the project will also include increased mental health resources and remembrances for the slain students.
“There is no playbook for what we have been through as a community,” Paxson wrote. “But we are Brown – the enduring strength of our caring and supportive community has long been a hallmark of who we are. Ever true.”
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