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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Brown/MIT shooting suspect found dead, officials say
lisbbb wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
The thing that bothers me about the whole story, apart from the deaths
of course, is that we live in a surveillance state. While I want major
crimes to be resolved and there to be deterrents to future ones, I just
don't know about turning the whole US into East Germany. It's not
going to work out well for any of us. As you can see, it didn't help
solve the crimes, either. It was witnesses who did all the heavy
lifting here.
noname123 wrote 1 hour 56 min ago:
I work on campus (very very close to the engineering building) and I
previously lived near Brookline. So all of this hits home.
But what got me was the tipster who blew wide open the case is
reportedly a homeless Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the
engineering building (a la South Korean film Parasite). It made me so
sad but also not surprised, that building does have a single occupancy
bathroom with showers; and no keycard access was needed in the evening
until 7pm.
So it made sense to me that he or she would've used that building for
shelter and comfort. Also it didn't boggle my mind at all that a Brown
grad (from the picture, the tipster looked like a artistic Brown
student vs. the careerist type) would be homeless - given that I known
many of my classmates who have a certain personality, brilliant but
also idealistic/uncompromising that made them brittle unfortunately in
a society that rewards conformity, settling and stability.
I can't get over the fact that two Brown student whom presumably have
fallen on the wayside of society have chosen two different paths, (1)
the homeless guy who still perseveres even in the basement of Barrus &
Holley for 15 years a la Parasite after 2010 graduation but still has
the situational awareness and rises to the occasion to give the biggest
tip to the Providence Police, (2) the other guy who harbors so much
resentment over a course of 25 years to plan a trip from Florida to gun
down innocent kids who are 18 and 19 and his classmate when they were
18 and 19 year old.
sometimez wrote 1 hour 32 min ago:
"...the tipster who blew wide open the case is reportedly a homeless
Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering
building..." Where did you read this?
shagie wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
[1] > How a Reddit post blew Brown University shooting
investigation wide open
> Frustration had mounted that the murderer had managed to get away
and that a clear image of his face hadn't emerged - until a Reddit
post finally put police on his trail.
HTML [1]: https://news.sky.com/story/how-a-reddit-post-blew-brown-un...
lisbbb wrote 1 hour 33 min ago:
Lazlo Hollyfield.
Life imitates art.
dylan604 wrote 1 hour 11 min ago:
We'll have to wait to see how the Brown student's life turns out
after. We'll see if he drives a way in an RV. Doubtful he'll be
living in the basement after this though
noname123 wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
I think Christina Paxson should hire him to be a director of
patrol or more realistically a community liason for Brown campus
police. The RI/FBI circus were all mum on whether the guy will
receive the 50K reward - very on-brand. He wants privacy so I
don't know even if there will be a GoFundMe but I think they
should do the right thing and give the guy his 50 grand at the
very least.
riffic wrote 1 hour 35 min ago:
there is so much systemic failure and it says a lot about the people
who are elevated by society and the people who are demonized.
noname123 wrote 1 hour 7 min ago:
I agree 100%. The biggest example here is if you read and go back
to the threads of HN before the downfalls of SBF and Liz Holmes,
you'll see so many people on here worshipping them and apologists
for their bad behavior. Most are corporate types are conformists
who buy what they are told ('till the narrative are changed). It
used to bother me but nowadays I just keep it pushing and aim for
the tails and let the mid-curve people be the mid-curve people.
10xDev wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
But resentment over what? I haven't seen anything on this.
astura wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
This whole post is filled with a ridiculous amount of unfounded
assumptions.
Aliabid94 wrote 2 hours 2 min ago:
Worth noting that a partner at Sequoia (Shaun Maguire) publicly accused
the wrong guy of being the shooter.
HTML [1]: https://www.fastcompany.com/91463942/sequoia-shaun-maguire-bro...
UncleMeat wrote 1 hour 11 min ago:
The whole VC industry is poison at this point.
lawlessone wrote 58 min ago:
It's like a lottery for rich people.
fwip wrote 1 hour 18 min ago:
> Maguire subsequently partially apologized for those comments in a
video. âThis tweet did not land the way I thought it would,â
What an asshole. He could have gotten the kid killed, not to mention
the damage to his social reputation. And he can't even manage a
"sorry if you were offended" non-apology.
tptacek wrote 1 hour 34 min ago:
Graeme Wood (always a good read) on this:
HTML [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/conspiracy-rumors-...
blast wrote 2 hours 19 min ago:
> John posted about the encounter on Reddit after the shooting
Anyone have the Reddit link? (I wonder why the article doesn't include
it)
ManuelKiessling wrote 1 hour 53 min ago:
This is admittedly very tangential only, but as a non-native speaker
/ not a US-American, I found this sentence from the NYT reporting[0]
a bit confusing:
> John said that the suspectâs clothing was inappropriate for the
weather and that they had made eye contact.
Why is the report mentioning the eye contact? Is that culturally
significant, as in, in the US you donât normally do eye contact
with strangers, and if a stranger does make eye contact, itâs
suspicious?
[0]:
HTML [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/brown-mit-shooting-inv...
nine_k wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
I suppose that made eye contact = the face was clearly visible for
a second or two, and thus recognized with more certainty.
wmeredith wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
I think the eye contact bit is useful as a signal that the witness
got a very good look at the suspect's face.
albroland wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/providence/comments/1pnkwoq/comment...
rationalist wrote 18 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/providence/comments/1pnkwoq/fbi_p...
websiteapi wrote 2 hours 23 min ago:
sadly flock ended up being helpful here (according to the police per
the article). also interesting that it was some random homeless guy who
happened to be there that blew the whole thing wide open. despite all
of the surveillance...
vablings wrote 2 hours 5 min ago:
How can you not read this and just see it's a huge puff piece for
Flock. As far as I can read from the first article and reports they
were not pivotal in tracking down the killer. It was once again only
someone else who knew that person and came forward, exactly the same
as Tyler Robison case
"Phil Helsel Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said a
person who had information about the suspect played a crucial role in
the case."
websiteapi wrote 1 hour 24 min ago:
The police state in the article it was helpful in linking the
crimes. What evidence do you have to contradict their testimony?
Computer0 wrote 1 hour 43 min ago:
The commentor you are replying to is likely in support of Flock.
websiteapi wrote 1 hour 20 min ago:
lol why do you say that?
tapoxi wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
Was it helpful? The man committed two shootings and they caught him
after he committed suicide. It didn't prevent a crime.
bagels wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
Who ever credibly claims that cameras prevent crime though?
websiteapi wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
It connected the two incidents per license plate readings per the
article. Why do you think it wasnât?
bigbuppo wrote 54 min ago:
My question is how many other license plates also would have been
connected this way? What's the false positive rate?
websiteapi wrote 50 min ago:
Why is that relevant for this case?
bigbuppo wrote 48 min ago:
If there's any claim that "flock found these two plates were
seen in both areas!!111" then how many other plates were seen
in both areas in the same timeframe? How much of this is
throwing away results that disagree with the narrative?
blast wrote 2 hours 15 min ago:
> some random homeless guy
Was he homeless? I haven't seen that mentioned in the articles.
ayhanfuat wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6386706790112
WhyOhWhyQ wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
New York Post states it in a YouTube video titled 'All About Brown,
MIT Shooting Suspect Claudio Neves Valente â who BARKED During
Massacre'.
cafard wrote 7 hours 44 min ago:
My apologies to the guy who first proposed that the shootings were
related--I thought that was a real stretch.
binary132 wrote 17 min ago:
yeah, very surprising
Glant wrote 16 hours 55 min ago:
I live in the area. Crazy how many helicopters and drones showed up so
quick and how many police there were. For several hours more and more
police and FBI vehicles kept arriving. Probably ended up with close to
100 officers on scene. Salem NH PD, Methuen MA PD, Providence RI PD, NH
state police, MA state police, FBI, and US Marshal service were the
ones I saw.
I think it's the biggest response I've personally seen since the Boston
Marathon Bombing.
dantillberg wrote 1 hour 51 min ago:
Every agency has to show how relevant they are.
lawlessone wrote 57 min ago:
Like the song 99 red balloons:
>Everyone's a superhero
>Everyone's a "Captain Kirk"
websiteapi wrote 2 hours 0 min ago:
all of that and they basically just got lucky. the guy walked to
brown from his car parked nearby and shot up some kids, waited days,
went to a guy's house in Massachusetts, killed him and never even got
caught - he committed suicide and was only found days after his
second killing
if anything this whole saga makes me happy smart people aren't
killers more often because this guy basically got away...
WillPostForFood wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
"this guy basically got away"
Titanic basically sailed safely across the Atlantic, except for a
bit of bad luck.
bagels wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
But they found him? If he was alive, he probably would have been
caught eventually, no?
websiteapi wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
I mean I guess all criminals die or are caught, yes.
nervousvarun wrote 1 hour 31 min ago:
I keep seeing this sort of sentiment everywhere and I'm trying to
understand it. The same thing happened after Charlie Kirk was
killed and the arrest there hinged on a confession by the killer to
his dad. A lot of commentary then that the police/FBI got lucky.
Ditto Mangione. They got lucky he was found in a random
McDonalds.
What exactly is the expectation here? Is there some sort of
wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of Law and
Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling up your
sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?
Would assume for the majority of planned murder to be resolved as
quickly as these highly publicized cases have been (the Kirk deal
took about 2 days also) there's going to have to be an element of
luck. Piecing together digital/forensic evidence is going to
require time and effort. If it's not an obvious connection
(domestic violence etc.) and there's no direct witnesses it seems
logical you only have a few outcomes:
A) Going to be solved due to a lucky break
B) Going to be solved after a ton of time/interviews/piecing
together forensic evidence
C) Not be solved.
Also he only "got away" because he killed himself. They likely
would have caught him fairly soon after this because they had his
identity from the car tags. I guess the point is though luck is
all you have if it's solved this quickly because it's so random.
websiteapi wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
I disagree that his catching was inevitable. They only knew an
identity yesterday. If the suspect wasnât a coward itâs
plausible they couldâve just driven away to literally any other
part of the United States and then flew back to Portugal. I have
no comment on the Kirk case.
As for the expectation, other than if civil liberties are going
to be violated in the name of safety I expect much faster
results, and Iâm sure the MIT professors family would agree.
nervousvarun wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
How could they possibly have solved it faster than this?
There's no magic to this and it takes time like anything else.
Yes there's digital footage but someone has to go through it.
The murder in Massachusetts isn't immediately obviously
related.
Of course the family wants it solved right away but there's a
reality to this that seems to be overlooked here but is also
not unique here. A lot of murders are never solved. Luck is a
factor all the time.
websiteapi wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
I am not saying luck isn't a factor - you're missing my point
which is we're compromising privacy and going further into a
surveillance state, yet it's not like the actual outcomes are
improving.
I'm not really sure what you think I'm arguing.
agoodusername63 wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
I believe the theory that Mangione even wanted to be caught and
arrested because he didn't see a viable life for himself anymore
with his spinal problems and medical bills. Who social engineers
their way into getting a CEO's itinerary and then keeps a
manifesto on their person well after the crime
Now he doesn't have to worry about paying for that. Or getting
reasonable treatment but hey,
dustincoates wrote 1 hour 34 min ago:
Being smart doesn't guarantee you'll get away with murder:
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb
sans_souse wrote 2 hours 6 min ago:
Same perspective here just 15 miles northwest of scene. Pretty sure
they confirmed officially presence of MA NH LEO, NHSP, MASP, FBI,
CIA, ATF, and Secret Service.
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