Authorities released a trove of new photos and videos and offered a $50,000 reward as they escalated their search Monday for the gunman who killed two students and injured nine others in a mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday.
Providence, Rhode Island, police shared time-stamped videos and photos of a man they believe to be a person of interest in the case shortly after a news conference Monday evening. The new imagery is the first to show the face of the same man of interest seen in the two earlier videos released, authorities said.
“We’re at the 49th hour, and there’s no one that wants to put this individual in handcuffs more than us, so this has brought us to a new lead,” Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez said of the new footage.
Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the FBI Boston field office, announced at the news conference that the bureau is offering “a reward of $50,000 for information that could lead to the identification, the arrest and the conviction of the individual responsible, who we believe to be armed and dangerous.”
Docks said the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, is documenting the trajectories of the bullets shot Saturday to “reconstruct the scene.”
Perez urged the public to review the new footage, which depicts a masked man dressed in all black donning a beanie and pacing on a sidewalk, and to call the police with information that could help identify him.
The shooting took place Saturday inside a first-floor classroom in Brown’s Barus & Holley, an engineering and physics building, authorities said. They said police were alerted to the gunshots at 4:05 p.m. on Saturday. Several thousand students from the school were taken by law enforcement to established safe zones overnight, authorities said. A shelter-in-place order was lifted Sunday.
Authorities had not identified a motive for the shooter as of Monday, nor had they recovered a weapon, but Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told residents there is no active or ongoing threat to the community.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said earlier Saturday that law enforcement was “definitely getting closer” to finding a person of interest in the shooting, expressing optimism in an interview with MS NOW that ballistic evidence gathered at the scene Saturday would aid in the investigation.
“There’s at least one person of interest, significant interest, that we have seen on video that we are very interested in identifying and pursuing,” Neronha said.
Police were going door to door Monday afternoon requesting available camera footage from businesses and residences near Brown University, while a large presence of FBI officers had amassed outside the university building where the shooting took place.
There is still no indication that more than one shooter was involved in the attack, according to Smiley. Local police continue to collaborate with state and federal authorities, including state marshals, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he said.
Authorities detained a person of interest early Sunday morning, but the man was released overnight. Smiley said a review of evidence showed “no basis to consider him a person of interest.”
The mayor encouraged Providence parents to send their children to school for the rest of the week, saying the increased police presence around Providence schools and the Brown campus will continue into Tuesday.
All the victims of the shooting were students at the university, according to Brown University President Christina Paxson. Nine victims were treated for gunshot injuries at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence. Six remain in critical but stable condition, one is in critical condition and one has been discharged, according to a spokesperson for the hospital.
Although authorities have not released the identities of the victims, a statement from the College Republicans of America identified 19-year-old Ella Cook of Mountain Brook, Alabama, who served as the group’s vice president, as one of the students killed.
“Ella was known for her bold, brave, and kind heart as she served her fellow classmates,” Martin Bertao, the president of the organization, said in a statement posted to X on Monday morning.
“There are no words,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said after reposting the College Republicans statement on X. “Thinking of her family and friends, especially her parents. God please bless them.”
A spokesperson for the Uzbekistan minister of foreign affairs identified MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, an Uzbek national of Midlothian, Virginia, as the other student who died in the shooting in a statement posted to Telegram on Monday morning.
“He was incredibly kind, funny, and smart,” Samira Umurzokova, MuhkammadAziz Umurzokov’s sister, wrote in a dedication to her brother on a GoFundMe page she organized. “He had big dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon and helping people. He continues to be my family’s biggest role model in all aspects.”
U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Jonathan Henick said in a statement Monday, “We extend our sincere condolences to Mr. Umurzokov’s family, friends, and fellow students and mourn the loss of his bright future.”
FBI officers could be seen Monday afternoon outside the Barus & Holley building.
Law enforcement released an initial short video late Saturday night showing a man they believed could be the gunman walking swiftly down a sidewalk. A second video was released Monday afternoon, followed by three videos and two photographs Monday evening.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the FBI Boston Field Office has established a command post in the area. He said the bureau has deployed specialists to provide resources to victims and survivors.
Kerem Pele, a Brown University junior, spoke with MS NOW shortly after visiting a student at the hospital who had been injured during the shooting. Pele did not name the student.
“This has just made me feel a lot of, a lot of fear, but also a lot of anger at the situation,” Pele said. “It’s not just a single incident. It’s not just a single tragedy. This is a part of a larger systemic problem in our country, and I think that this, if anything else, is forcing people to reckon with that fact.”
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 Saturday in an interview with MS NOW. “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.
Justin Kuo, a student who sheltered in place on campus for roughly six hours, said Sunday that while authorities “did the best that they could with the time given,” there needs to be more protective measures implemented.
“There absolutely needs to be a look into the policies in place. I mean, we didn’t get a text at Brown until 10 to 15 minutes after the event,” Kuo told MS NOW.
Smiley noted the uptick in anxiety the Providence community is experiencing after authorities released the person of interest, but said authorities have received “zero credible threats” to the area in the days since the shooting. There is an increased police presence in Providence, particularly in the Brown University area.
Maya Eaglin contributed to this report.
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