Law enforcement officials released new videos Tuesday afternoon of the person of interest investigators are looking to identify in connection with the deadly mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday.
Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar L. Perez, Jr. advised the public to focus on the body movements of the person shown in the videos during a press conference Tuesday evening.
“You wanna focus on the body movements, the way the person moved their arms, the body posture, the way they carry their weight,” he said.
Gunfire erupted on the first floor of Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering and physics building around 4 p.m. on Dec. 13 during an economics class. The shooting left sophomore Ella Cook and first-year student Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov dead and nine other students injured.
As of Tuesday evening, the shooter remained at large.
Investigators’ highest priority right now is identifying the person of interest, as they believe this is the critical next step in charging someone in the shooting, officials said Tuesday evening.
“Once we identify who this person is, I believe we’ll be able to locate them,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said during the press conference. “It’s very hard to hide in this country. But until you have a name … it’s not particularly productive to reach out to law enforcement across the country as to who you’re looking for, because we don’t yet know who we’re looking for.”
Investigators said Tuesday evening that they are hoping to receive more footage of the person of interest from the public, as they speculate that he may have walked around the area surrounding Brown University as much as a week prior to the shooting. They have already determined that he was in this part of Providence as early as 10:30 a.m. the day of the shooting, Perez said.
“We also know in this profession that many criminals will pace out an area weeks and days prior,” he explained.
Law enforcement officials have described the person of interest as being approximately 5-foot-8 inches tall with a “stocky build.” Photos and videos shared by police show what appears to be man dressed in dark clothing, including a beanie and face mask, walking down the street near Brown University approximately two hours before the shooting.
Officials have asked anyone associated with Brown or who lives or spends time around Providence to review the photos and videos of the person of interest. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the “identification, arrest and conviction of the individual.”
The Providence Police Department asks that information about the person of interest be shared via phone at 401-272-3121 or through the FBI’s tip line.
As of Tuesday evening, one of the seven injured students was in critical condition, five more were in critical but stable condition, and one was in stable condition, according to law enforcement and Brown University. Two have been released from Rhode Island Hospital.
Following the shooting, the gunman left the university’s engineering building on the Hope Street side, officials said. A massive law enforcement response soon flooded Rhode Island to search for the shooter as the school and surrounding community went into a lockdown that lasted more than 12 hours.
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Officials announced that a person of interest — identified only as a man in his 30s — was in custody early Sunday morning. But by the following morning, authorities confirmed that the man had been released.
On Monday night, officials said he’d been eliminated as a suspect after a review of the evidence.
