The person of interest detained in connection with Saturday’s Brown University shooting has been released from police custody, according to a spokesman for the city of Providence. The shooting in Rhode Island killed two students and injured several others.
Earlier on Sunday morning, a 24-year-old individual was located by police in a hotel room in the nearby town of Coventry, according to authorities. Investigators also recovered two guns and high capacity magazines from the hotel room. However, “evidence now points in a different direction,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said during Sunday night’s news conference.
Despite the new development, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said late Sunday night said the “status of safety in our community remains unchanged, and we believe that you remain safe in our community.”
Smiley also stressed that the investigation is ongoing, and that police would be restarting neighborhood canvasses and looking for additional video and photographic evidence.
Law enforcement officials have still not announced a motive for the shooting.
The “shelter in place” order at the college issued around the time of the shooting was lifted Sunday morning, and Smiley said it would not be going back into place.
In a Sunday morning update, university officials said of the students injured in the shooting, seven are in critical but stable condition, while one student remains in critical condition. Another one of the hospitalized students has been released.
Smiley said he had met with some of the victims, whose names have not been released, and that “they showed courage, hope, gratitude.”
The shooting took place inside a first-floor classroom in Brown’s Barus & Holley building, an engineering and physics building. Police were alerted to the gunshots at 4:05 p.m. Several thousand students from the school were transported overnight by law enforcement to established safe zones.
“The past 24 hours really have been unimaginable — it’s a tragedy that no university community is ever ready for,” Brown University President Christina Paxson said in a statement Sunday. “While we always prepare for major crises, we also pray such a day never comes.”
Paxson announced that all remaining undergraduate, graduate and medical school classes, exams and papers or projects for the Fall 2025 semester have been put on hold. The college’s final examination period began on Dec. 12 and was scheduled to end on Saturday.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.