A person of interest detained after a Brown University shooting that killed two students and injured nine was to be released after law enforcement authorities determined there was no basis to keep the individual in custody, officials said on Sunday night.
The disclosure, made at a hastily convened late-night news conference, represents a dramatic setback in an investigation into killings that set off hours of chaos on the Ivy League campus and unravels progress that authorities thought they had made earlier in the day when they detained a man at a Rhode Island hotel in connection with the attack.
The release of the lone person of interest leaves law enforcement without any known suspect, with officials pledging to redouble efforts in the investigation by canvassing for video surveillance that could help pinpoint the killer’s identity.
Photo: AP
“We have a murderer out there,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said, while Providence Mayor Brett Smiley acknowledged that ”the news is likely to cause fresh anxiety for our community.”
LOCKDOWN LIFTED
Despite an enhanced police presence at Brown, officials are not recommending another shelter-in-place order like the one that followed the Saturday afternoon shooting, when hundreds of officers searched for the shooter, and urged students and staff to shelter in place. The lockdown, which stretched into the night, was lifted early on Sunday, but authorities had not yet released information about a potential motive.
On Sunday morning, officials took into custody a person of interest at a Hampton Inn hotel in Coventry, Rhode Island, about 32km from Providence. Two people familiar with the matter identified that individual as a 24-year-old man from Wisconsin, though authorities never released the person’s name.
“I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes you head in one direction and then you have to regroup and go in another, and that’s exactly what has happened over the last 24 hours or so,” Neronha said.
He said that “certainly there was some degree of evidence that pointed to the individual” who had been taken into custody, but “that evidence needed to be corroborated and confirmed, and over the last 24 hours leading into just very, very recently, that evidence now points in a different direction.”
The shooting occurred during one of the busiest moments of the academic calendar, as final exams were under way. Brown canceled all remaining classes, exams, papers and projects for the semester and told students they could leave campus, underscoring the scale of the disruption and the gravity of the attack.
As police scoured the area for the shooter, many students remained barricaded in rooms while others hid behind furniture and bookshelves. One video showed students in a library shaking and wincing, as they heard loud bangs just before police entered the room to clear the building.
MUTUAL SUPPORT
University president Christina Paxson teared up while describing her conversations with students both on campus and in the hospital.
“They are amazing and they’re supporting each other,” she said at a news conference. “There’s just a lot of gratitude.”
The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the engineering building, firing more than 40 rounds from a 9mm handgun, a law enforcement official said.
Two handguns were recovered when the person of interest was taken into custody and authorities also found two loaded 30-round magazines, the official said.
One of the firearms was equipped with a laser sight that projects a dot to aid in targeting, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
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