By:Nancy Lavin
Rhode Island Current
Newly released, enhanced video footage and photos build out the description of suspected Brown University mass shooter: his gait, his pacing, appearance.
But the identity of the man seen pacing the residential neighborhood as early as 10:30 a.m. the day of the shooting remains unknown. Local and federal investigators continue to ask for information, including photo and video evidence, as the search for the person responsible for killing two students and injuring nine people stretches into a fourth day.
“We’re looking for a moment that is short, shorter than a person taking a breath,” Col. Oscar Perez, Providence Police chief, said during a press conference late Tuesday afternoon. “It’s incredibly hard work to do that and so we’re asking the public to assist with that.”
More than 200 “credible” tips have poured into city and federal tip lines, along with terabytes of video and photo footage from residential properties surrounding the Ivy League campus. Yet there is no video from inside the Barus and Holley engineering building that shows the gunman.
“The only video of that presumed, anticipated, suspected however you want to define it person of interest — you have it,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said Tuesday.
Nor have investigators been able to trace the person of interest’s movements a few blocks beyond Governor Street, a few blocks east of the engineering building.
“What’s really critical first, is that we identify who the person is,” Neronha said. “Once we identify who the person is, I believe we’ll be able to locate them. It’s very hard to hide in this country.”
Neronha continued, “Once we’ve identified him, we’ll know more information about where he’s from, and who his friends are, and where he might have gone.”
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward to anyone with information that leads to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person responsible.
Casing the area
Besides a rough description of a 5-foot-8, stocky man wearing various shades of dark clothing, a satchel strapped across his body in some of the video segments, officials were reluctant to comment on any more facets of his identity, including an age, motive or connection to the university.
Perez said he appears to be casing the area in preparation for the shooting, noting it was a common practice among criminals who take days, sometimes weeks, to ready themselves before committing a crime.
Even the behavior exhibited in the video, strolling down the sidewalk, then later standing with hands clasped behind his back, looking out the street, was not enough to draw firm conclusions from, said Ted Docks, special agent in charge for the FBI’s Boston field office.
“To get into the mind of an individual that would commit such a heinous act, that’s a place I don’t want to go right now,” Docks said.
Perez said the mid-morning walk Saturday suggests the suspect was casing the neighborhood, familiarizing himself with the setting in preparation for the crime.
Several reporters asked questions about student and faculty pages that have allegedly been taken down since the shooting, along with conflicting reports that the gunman shouted something before opening fire.
But Perez and Christina Paxson, Brown University president, denied any knowledge of university pages being scrubbed. The words spoken, if any, remain unknown, Perez said.
The ever-outspoken Neronha again jumped in with another word of caution.
“It’s easy to jump from words that were spoken to what those words are, to a name that reflects a motive, targeting a particular person,” he said. “That’s a really dangerous road to go down.”
Investigators already ran into one dead end after detaining a person found at a Coventry hotel early Sunday morning, only to release him less than 24 hours later because there was no evidence tying him to the crime. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley described the initial, incorrect suspect as a “setback” in an interview with the Boston Globe’s Rhode Island Report podcast released Monday.
Neronha, however, said Tuesday that while disappointing, it was not unusual for investigations to generate multiple leads that don’t always result in an arrest. Investigators continue to canvass the East Side neighborhood around the scene of the shooting Tuesday in search of additional clues, but the search may expand beyond the neighborhood, or the city limits, in the coming days, Neronha said.
Providence police are also working with law enforcement across the state, and in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Perez said.