Brown University custodian warned security about shooter weeks before attack
A custodian from Brown University has come forward and claimed that he warned a third-party, on-campus security guard weeks ago about a suspicious man who turned out to be the suspected shooter in an attack that killed two and injured nine.
Derek Lisi, a 15-year employee, saw a man pacing the hallways, looking into classrooms and hiding in a bathroom to avoid being seen in the weeks leading up to the Dec. 13 shooting inside Brown’s Barus and Holley building, as first reported by The Boston Globe .
The custodian later recognized the widely circulated photos and videos of the shooting suspect who was found dead in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, after a five-day manhunt.
Officials say the suspected shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head two days before he was found on Dec. 18.
“He’d been casing that place for weeks,” Lisi told the Globe.
On nearly 10 separate occasions, Lisi said, he saw the man matching Neves Valente’s description and wearing the same clothes in and around the engineering building since the beginning of November.
Lisi warned the third-party security guard twice about the suspicious person in the building.
The contractor company, Event Staffing Services, confirmed to the Globe that one of its employees was told about the suspicious person in December, but said it is not responsible for investigating those types of reports.
The company’s president, David Madonna, told the Globe that his staff do not perform security guard or police officer duties and that his company’s staff tell Brown employees to contact campus police when public safety issues arise.
Lisi told the Globe he could not recall whether the company’s staff told him to call the police.
In an interview with WPRI , Lisi said that he immediately recognized the person of interest in photos and videos that officials shared with the public in the aftermath of the shooting.
He called the tip line and later met with detectives two days after the shooting.
“I told detectives, it was like I could see him and nobody else could — it is an eerie feeling,” Lisi said. “It was the way he was browsing in the classrooms. He was like rolling his eyes one way, rolling his eyes another way. And it wasn’t just that classroom, it was all the classrooms.”
In court documents filed in Rhode Island last week, investigators wrote about a Brown University custodian who told police he had seen a man wearing the same clothing and face mask as the person of interest captured in photos and videos.
The custodian told investigators he had seen the man multiple times over the past month, and the custodian’s account was soon corroborated by security video from the building.
Brown University officials did not return a request for comment on Monday.
As of Monday morning, five of the nine victims remained hospitalized at Rhode Island Hospital in stable condition, officials said. The four other victims were discharged.
Ella Cook , a sophomore, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov , a first-year student, were killed in the shooting.
Officials also identified Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, as the suspectin the killing of MIT physics professor Nuno Loureiro, 47, who was found shot dead in his Brookline apartment complex on Dec. 15.
Officials declined to discuss a motive in the shootings last week, but noted that Neves Valente was a physics student at Brown University and that he and Loureiro had previously studied at the same university in Lisbon.
Court documents charged Neves Valente with 25 counts, including two counts of first-degree murder.
Gunfire erupted on the first floor of the university’s Barus and Holley engineering and physics building around 4 p.m. on Dec. 13 during an exam review session.
A five-day manhunt ended after a Reddit user came forward with a key break in the case.
The Reddit user, only identified as “John” by authorities, provided investigators with a detailed rundown of his encounter with Neves Valente that eventually led to his discovery in New Hampshire.
The tip led investigators to search for a gray Nissan with Florida license plates that might be a rental vehicle. They soon found a gray Nissan Sentra in security video from the scene.
Investigators learned that the car was a rental from Alamo Rent-A-Car in downtown Boston and eventually found his body in the New Hampshire storage unit.
Brown University’s records indicated that Neves Valente had been a doctoral student studying physics from the fall semester of 2000 to the spring semester of 2001, according to court documents.
Neves Valente became a legal permanent resident of the U.S. in 2017. His last known address was located in Miami, Florida.
During a press conference Thursday night , Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said she believed Neves Valente and MIT Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro knew each other.
Both men were from Portugal, and Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez Jr. said previously that they’d previously studied at the same university in Lisbon.
Brown University Shooting, Dec. 13, 2025
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