It seems plausible he may have thought he was targeting not just the building but professor(s) associated with the department he may have been disgruntled against? But instead by random chance an economics class was meeting there instead of a physics class?
1 Like
Face palm.
3 Likes
Not sure what you are saying - but I chose the wrong college, in part due to Pan Am 103. Itās a nightmare that haunts me regularly and will tremendously so on Sunday.
I canāt change history but I often think, I should have gone to my #2 - which is where I ended up doing my Masters.
But no one knows in advance the tragedy that will strike anywhere.
3 Likes
I have this crazy notion (with absolutely ZERO evidence) that he was walking around the neighborhood looking for a specific person to leave their house (like the MIT prof was), couldnāt find them, and then just went in the physics/engineering building randomly to do something/anything as he was hyped up?
and as others say, we may never know
I am not sure why heās be made at an econ professor either, but could be!
Agreed. I wasnāt aware that Physics and Engineering were both in the same building.
1 Like
It begged context.
Ahh, yeah, it is physics, and I think most of engineering too (maybe all)..I have a lot of alum friends and all the science-y friends have told me they spent a lot of time in that building in last few days:( (not an alum personally)
Widely reported now that the tip that broke the case came from Reddit, and the redditor - a homeless person who noticed the shooterās odd behavior, movement, and attire - will be receiving the 50k reward.
7 Likes
ā¦and a Brown graduate.
5 Likes
The affidavit and warrant from the Providence is available HERE and outlines the different pieces of evidence from witness statements, photos, etc. and shows how the investigation came together in terms of identifying the shooter.
1 Like
I had the same reaction, but then I noticed that his interactions with the murderer occurred a couple of weeks earlier on Nov. 28 and Dec. 1. His first reaction was probably that those interactions and the murders were unrelated. It probably took a couple of days for him to come to the conclusion that the two might be related.
1 Like
I think that your analysis makes complete sense. I noticed that he left his graduate program in April, 2001, which means that he quit before the end of the semester. I conclude from that information that he didnāt just withdraw but was either failing or overwhelmed and couldnāt finish the semester.
It sounds like he had a difficult adjustment as a foreign student trying to learn a difficult subject in his second language.
2 Likes
The Paxson letter we received this morning said the following:
My daughter, a math concentrator, had said the same thing last night, so Iām guessing thatās a potential partial explanation. He was only a Brown PhD student for a short time and withdrew. It will be interesting to learn whether he struggled at Brown or if he withdrew for some other reason. Coming from the same academic program in Portugal as the MIT professor he killed, you have to suspect that feelings of failure and frustrated ambitions may have been a motive.
We are constantly seeing scenes of places on College Hill weāve walked by so many times. My D took classes at Barus & Holley and walked by the building almost every day.
Yes, I think thatās plausible. Physics is hard and many people try and bail from the subject. My astro-physics D has said many times that her undergraduate physics courses were more difficult than her graduate level math classes. Iām sure experiences vary but thereās no doubt physics isnāt for everyone. Perhaps thatās all weāre ever going to get. I hope he has family somewhere so that investigators have someone to interview to at least piece together a motive.
5 Likes
I think the idea is that the general notion of āchoosing the wrong collegeā is not usually paired with mass shootings. Itās like saying the people in Sydney chose the wrong beach or the people in Las Vegas chose the wrong concert.
I mean, yeah, in a fatalistic sense, they did.
As for my kid, sheād never say she chose the wrong college because of this. I think as people we know we canāt get into that sort of thinking or none of us will ever leave our homes.
7 Likes
I donāt understand this and it sounds somewhat like victim blaming to me. They didnāt āchoose the wrong collegeā, they were college kids at an exam review session who unfortunately were targeted by an unhinged, armed man who wanted to kill people. Sadly, it can - and will - happen anywhere these days. Should kids not have chosen Brown (or FSU, Kent State, Michigan State, UVA, VT, etc) or Syracuse (in the case of Pan Am 103)? What about the kids who have already survived one school shooting like Sandy Hook or Parkland? They would never go to college if they thought this way.
7 Likes
To be fair, the shooting at Brown was at 4 p.m. Saturday. The MIT professor was murdered early in the day on Monday. On Sunday morning, almost all area law enforcement was storming the Hampton Inn in Coventry RI because, as our crack FBI director was crowing on social media, the FBI had identified the shooter through its Cellullar Analysis Survey Team. Except, of course, it was some hapless guy from Wisconsin who had nothing to do with it. I canāt help thinking that even had the Redditor gone to the FBI earlier he would have been brushed off because they were so sure they already had their guy. The admission that law enforcement had the wrong guy came late Sunday night. So even if the Redditor had gone immediately to the feds, there wasnāt much time to find him before the professor was murdered. Plus, I donāt think the video of the actual shooter was broadcast until Monday, and thatās when the Redditor made the connection iirc.
5 Likes
What a great point!
The FBI under Keystone Kash Patel has been so anxious to grab headlines that we now have an example where they did real damage. Had they not broadcast their detention of the person of interest in the Coventry hotel, they might have had the information from the tipster sooner and have had an outside chance of preventing the murder if the MIT professor. Regardless, Patel and his cronies should keep their mouths shut during an ongoing investigation.
6 Likes
āKeystone Kashā. Lol. Iām filing that one and using it myself. Well done.
5 Likes
I am no Patel fan at ALLā¦ and I think the guy they cleared was also refusing to cooperate and the āclearingā process took a long time (or at least that was the implication in the press conference Q&A last night). To be fair to him, I am sure he didnāt have a lawyer yet, and it was a smart thing to do to NOT to talk or say a damn thing until he had one, but also was a slow process to rule him out too.
Lots of could haveā¦I am not sure witness coming forward would have saved the MIT professor, who knows? Possible if he came forward earlier, the shooterās name would have been released, and the shooter would have gone forward faster? who knows.
Hereās something Iāve learned from my criminal justice adjacent family members.
There are legitimate reasons why someone who has been apprehended and is a āperson of interestā doesnāt immediately blab to the FBI that they couldnāt possibly have been in Providence when the murder took place to clear themselves.
Maybe theyāre cheating on their spouse. Maybe they just lost 25K at a casino in CT and need time to come up with a narrative before going home to that spouse. Maybe theyāre fleeing a domestic violence situation and canāt āoutā themselves until they get assurance of protection from law enforcement. Maybe theyāre in hiding from the mob. Who knows. But criticizing the guy at the motel in Rhode Island for not acting expeditiously to clear his name is a little off in my opinion. Law Enforcement is supposed to collect evidence, not make arrests based on hunches. So they found the wrong guy, and then needed a day to regroup. And someone else died. Which is horrible and tragic. But the timeline is the timeline.
Iām reading people criticizing the custodian at Brown who saw the actual killer in the building a few days before the murder who didnāt āsay somethingā. Well- he didnāt know the guy was armed. He didnāt know that he didnāt have an ID and he didnāt know any of the things we now know. All he did was recognize the photo and tell the cops āIāve seen this guy on campus beforeā.
Weāre all performing in some wretched who dunnit play right now.
8 Likes