Like many other schools around the nation, Brown University, an Ivy League research institution in Providence, Rhode Island, held its final examination week in Dec.

For Zoe Weissman, a Brown sophomore, the university is her “favorite place in the world” — a place that typically experiences “very, very little crime.”

In the historic college town of Providence, gun violence is almost unheard of.

Yet, on Dec. 13, at approximately 4:05 p.m., former graduate student Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente (the shooter) entered the unlocked Barus and Holley Building of Brown University’s School of Engineering, just as exams and reviews were ending. He proceeded to shoot 11 people. Most of the incident occurred inside room 166 on the first floor, where teaching assistant Joseph Oduro was leading a review session for the final exam of Professor Rachel Friedberg’s introductory economics class. Dec. 13 was the second day of the school’s final examination week for the fall semester.

“I got a text from my friend and suitemate Johnson saying that there is an active shooter on campus,” junior Brown student Irene Kim said. “To be honest, I didn’t think that this was that big of a deal. I’ve gotten many alerts and warnings throughout my life in California and my time in New York about nearby shootings, and I’ve heard just a lot about it in the news…. it is indicative of how we as Americans live our day-to-day lives.”

For the Brown students who came from communities that experienced gun violence, the shooting was an all too familiar feeling. As a sixth grader, Weissman was stuck outside of Westglades Middle School when the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting occurred on Feb. 14, 2018. She has PTSD and had to switch schools following the shooting.

“I got a call from my friend on campus,” Weissman said. “She asked me where I was, and she sounded upset. She asked if I was in Barus and Holley…. my brain immediately went to school shooting.”

Twenty minutes after shots were fired, the university’s Public Safety and Emergency Management issued the first alert message to the Brown community warning of an active shooter near Barus and Holley.

The two people who lost their lives were Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov. Nine others were wounded.

At one point, a false suspect was detained and released.

Students were stuck in lecture halls, basements, dorms, gyms and classrooms. Without frequent drills at Brown, many students were underprepared to respond. Most students were on lockdown until late that night.

Once rooms were cleared by the police, students left campus en masse, taking Ubers and making their way to airports.

“Seeing a ton of cops pointing guns at you, telling you to come out with your hands up…was a scary sight,” Brown freshman and Class of 2025 graduate Ella Maurice said.

Brown University announced that classes and exams for the rest of the fall term were canceled.

Security footage and images from the days prior to the shooting were released as law enforcement attempted to identify the shooter. The suspect was difficult to identify due to a lack of security camera coverage in the Barus and Holley Building. The investigation remained stagnant until an informative tip about a grey car was posted on Reddit. On Dec. 18, the suspect was identified and found dead.

Two days after the shooting, he killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in his home in Boston.

“The inability of the city and the state’s legal authorities to sustain the shooter is embarrassing and life-threatening,” Kim said. “The response of the U.S. president to the tragedy and all the others that occurred just within this week is simply indicative of ignorance and apathy.”

Audio files recorded after the shooting were found following the shooter’s suicide.

“I also don’t regret what I did,” the shooter said, “I particularly like Trump’s sh*t, to have called me an animal, which is true. I am an animal and he is also, but I have no love — I have no hatred towards America, I also have no hatred at all. This was an issue of opportunity.”

The Brown shooting, which was carried out by a Portuguese immigrant, was used to perpetuate anti-immigrant rhetoric by the Trump administration. Far-right activist Laura Loomer baselessly claimed that the shooter had shouted “Allahu Akbar” before firing upon the lecture hall, which was refuted by the shooter himself.

President Donald Trump ordered Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to suspend the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, through which the shooter had attained permanent residency in the U.S. in 2017. As the program was created by an act of Congress, the legality of the order is not clear.

Students were also subject to conspiracy theories and accusations. Right-wing figures on social media repeatedly stated, without evidence, that a Palestinian Brown University student was the shooter. By Dec. 16, Brown University had deleted the wrongly accused student’s profile pages from its website to protect him from harassment and doxxing attempts.

“One of my classmates was falsely accused of being the shooter solely because they’ve spoken out about certain social and political issues that are personal to them,” Weissman said. “I know this person personally. They’re an amazing student and amazing human being and an amazing researcher, and they’ve been doing so much work for their community both locally and abroad. The fact that they were facing death threats and people accusing them of being a shooter was so disheartening.”

In the face of hate and opposition, members of the Brown community came together to support each other. Brown compiled Community Resources for students, and the larger Providence community came together to offer students housing, transportation and food.

Brown University students returned the morning of Jan. 21 for a new semester with updated security measures. Many Barus and Holley lecture halls and classrooms are inaccessible to students. In 2025, the U.S. saw college shootings occur at Florida State University, Elizabeth City State University, Kentucky State University, Lincoln University and Utah Valley University — gun violence deaths will not stop with Brown.