The Brown University mass shooting which killed two students may be connected to the assassination of an MIT professor two days later, police have said.
An unidentified gunman opened fire on the Brown campus in Providence, Rhode Island on Saturday, and investigators failed to track the attacker down.
Two days later, an unknown assailant fatally shot Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Nuno Loureiro inside his Boston home around 50 miles away.
FBI agent Ted Docks said Tuesday ‘there seems to be no connection’ between the two shootings, but investigators told WPRI Thursday that there may be a link.
The outlet did not give further information about the connection, but said it marks ‘a new break in the case’ which has baffled investigators for days.
Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, of Virginia, and Ella Cook, of Alabama, were fatally gunned down during the mass shooting at Brown on Saturday.
They were in a study session held at the Ivy League’s School of Engineering Barus and Holley Building when a gunman burst in shortly after 4pm and opened fire.
The gunman fired 40 rounds, killing the two students and wounding 12 more.
FBI agents have released several photographs and videos of two ‘persons of interest’, but they are yet to name a suspect in the tragedy.
A different ‘person of interest’ was detained at the Hampton Inn hotel in Coventry the day after the shooting, but they were later released without charge.
Two days after the Brown shooting, at around 8.30pm Monday evening, married father-of-three Loureiro was shot dead in his home in Brookline, Boston.
Loureiro’s neighbor and friend, Louise Cohen, said she discovered his body after hearing shots disturb the peace of their beautiful area on Gibbs Street.
Cohen said she was lighting a menorah candle when she heard gunshots fired. She rushed to the hallway of their building and found Loureiro lying on his back.
The professor’s heartbroken wife was also in the entry along with another neighbor, and they scrambled to dial 911. Loureiro was taken to hospital but died the next day.
Loureiro’s neighbors remembered him as a kind-hearted, ‘wonderful man’, while students flocked to the candle-lit vigil in his memory.
Hellbound and Down 