Following an all-night manhunt, a person of interest has been detained in the campus shooting that left two people dead and nine others injured Saturday afternoon on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said during a news conference on Sunday morning that the individual was taken into custody in the early morning hours, and that police are not currently looking for anyone else.
Smiley confirmed the shelter-in-place order had been lifted and said hopefully the people of Providence can “breathe a little easier this morning.”
Smiley also said on Sunday that one of the injured had been discharged from the hospital.
As of Saturday night, six of the injured were in critical but stable condition, one was in critical condition and one was in stable condition, according to a Brown University Health spokeswoman. Smiley said that an additional victim had suffered non-life-threatening injuries from “fragments” near them and is expected to make a full recovery. Authorities have not identified the two people killed or those injured.
Authorities released a short video late Saturday night showing the person they believe to be the suspect in the shooting. The video showed a man dressed all in black and wearing a black beanie walking down a sidewalk at a brisk pace before taking a sharp right turn and continuing down the sidewalk until he is out of the frame. The man’s face could not be seen in the video.
Smiley said on Saturday that authorities were canvassing the neighborhood and campus “for additional video footage, still photography and are interviewing witnesses.” And Providence Police Commander Timothy O’Hara asked the public during a Saturday news conference to contact police if they recognized the person.
The shooting took place inside a first-floor classroom in the Barus & Holley Building, a university engineering and physics building that contains classrooms and lab space, Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez Jr. said. Police were alerted to the gunshots at 4:05 p.m.
Perez said police do not know how the suspect entered the building but that he exited on the Hope Street side of the complex.
According to Smiley, no “useful video” from inside the building where the shooting took place had been found.
“My community is afraid right now, and we’re saddened that this has come to Providence,” Smiley said. “And there’s two people who, a week away from Christmas, aren’t going to be celebrating with their family, or two days away from the first day of Hanukkah.”
Brown President Christina Paxson said Saturday night that the two who were killed and at least eight of those injured were students at the university. Authorities said they had not confirmed that.
“This is the day that one hopes never happens, and it has. Our focus right now is on supporting the families who have been affected by this,” Paxson said.
Police have not given a motive for the violence.
Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee said he had spoken with President Donald Trump on the phone. Trump expressed urgency and offered support from federal authorities “to make sure that we catch the individual that brought so much suffering to so many people,” McKee said.
Trump said earlier Saturday evening that he had been briefed on the situation and that the FBI was working alongside local law enforcement. “What a terrible thing it is,” he told reporters outside the White House. “All we can do right now is pray for the victims.”
Members of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are on the scene and working with local and state authorities, O’Hara said. Smiley said he expects the FBI will take over the investigation.
Law enforcement members established a perimeter around a portion of Brown’s campus, according to an update from university police. Individuals in residential buildings within the perimeter were told to continue sheltering in place. Those in administrative campus buildings were told to wait until law enforcement officials arrive to escort them out.
All final exams scheduled for Sunday have been canceled, Brown University Provost Francis Doyle said.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he was “praying for the victims and their families,” adding, “My heart breaks for the students who were looking forward to a holiday break and instead are dealing with another horrifying mass shooting, this time in our own Providence community.”
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a statement: “Brown’s students and its neighbors are shaken. Some families, classmates, and loved ones are gathered together in hospital waiting rooms at this very moment waiting for updates on patients. We are with them in spirit. They will need the support of all of us in the days ahead.”
Ian Ritter, university news editor for the student-run Brown Daily Herald, said he had been in contact with several students who were in Barus & Holley at the time of the shooting. Some fled the scene, some took shelter and others were evacuated by law enforcement, Ritter said.
“It was chaos from what I’ve heard,” Ritter said. “And students weren’t really sure where the gunshots were coming from, and throughout the afternoon we were learning different things about possible locations where the shooter may have gone, or at that time, people thought there could possibly be more than one shooter.”
For one Brown student, Saturday’s school shooting was painfully familiar. Mia Tretta, a junior, said she had been shot in the stomach with a 45-caliber ghost gun during a mass shooting at her California high school in 2019.
“There’s no handbook that you get when you get shot in the stomach during a school shooting and your best friend is killed, and you no longer feel safe at school,” Tretta said in an interview with MS NOW. She said she learned of the news in her campus dorm room. “It’s the worst possible thing that you can imagine, and to have to go through that once, let alone twice, is horrific.”
Tretta urged her fellow students to seek support and lean on one another.
“It is because of decades and years of inaction across the country, within each individual state, that things like this continue to happen,” Tretta said.
Gun safety advocates condemned the tragedy and called for meaningful action.
“Students should only have to worry about studying for finals right now, not hiding from gunfire,” former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived a shooting in 2011, said in a statement. “Guns are the leading cause of death for young people in America — this is a five alarm fire and our leaders in Washington have ignored it for too long.”
“While we await details, one thing is clear: today’s shooting at Brown University is another unacceptable reminder of our nation’s gun violence crisis,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement. “We either take action, or we bury more of our kids.”
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, said, “No student should ever receive an alert telling them to run, hide, and fight just to survive on campus. This is not normal, it is not acceptable, and our students deserve action that ends gun violence — not instructions on how to endure a tragedy that never should have happened.”
