Suspect in Brown University shooting and MIT professor's killing found dead, officials say

The suspected gunman in a mass shooting at Brown University last week was found dead in the evening of Thursday, officials said, revealing that he also was suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.

The suspect was found in a New Hampshire storage facility where he rented a unit with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Speaking at a press conference, Providence police chief Col. Oscar Perez said investigators believe the suspect acted alone.

"We looked at financial records, we looked at video footages, and in this specific incident, it was actually a video that provided us with a description of a vehicle. That was corroborated through a tip that was received through the tip centre," Perez said.

Officials said the man is responsible for both the shooting at Brown University that killed two people and injured nine others, as well as the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor (MIT), who was fatally shot in his Brookline home on Monday.

The 48-year-old suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, was previously enrolled at the graduate school to study physics from the fall of 2000 until the spring of 2001, but has no current affiliation to the Ivy League university, according to the university's President Christina Paxson.

Two people were killed and nine were wounded in the mass shooting last week during final exams at Brown University in Rhode Island. It remains unclear whether the suspect knew any of the victims in the auditorium. Police briefly detained a person of interest, who was then released due to lack of evidence. The investigation took a turn on Thursday, when authorities said they were looking for a connection between the university mass shooting and a fatal attack on an MIT professor near Boston.