Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old male Brown University student from Uzbekistan, was killed on December 13, 2025, in Providence, Rhode Island, when gunfire tore through an on-campus study gathering during finals season. What began as an ordinary Saturday afternoon—students filtering into a review session, laptops open, minds fixed on upcoming exams—ended with Umurzokov fatally shot and another student, Ella Cook, also dead, while nine more people were wounded.
The shooting unfolded inside the Barus & Holley engineering building, where an economics final-exam review session was underway in a first-floor classroom. A masked gunman entered and opened fire, turning rows of seats and scattered notebooks into cover as students ducked, ran, and tried to pull one another to safety. Emergency alerts pushed students across campus into lockdown, and the surrounding streets filled with police as officers cleared buildings and rushed the injured toward hospitals.
In the days that followed, investigators described a fast-moving search complicated by limited clear imagery and the attacker's quick escape. Federal and local authorities circulated photos and short surveillance clips, and the FBI publicly offered a reward for information as the campus community headed into winter break under the weight of grief and uncertainty. A person of interest was briefly detained and later released as the investigation continued to develop.
By December 18, law enforcement announced they had identified the suspected shooter as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a former Brown student with no current affiliation to the university. Authorities said the case broke open after a tip helped investigators connect the suspect to movements and records that mapped out his path around New England. As that picture sharpened, prosecutors and investigators also said they believed the same suspect was responsible for the fatal shooting of MIT professor Nuno F. G. Loureiro in Massachusetts two days after the Brown attack, turning a campus tragedy into a broader, more chilling trail of violence.
The manhunt ended without an arrest: officials said the suspect was found dead by suicide inside a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, after police closed in. With the suspected gunman deceased, there would be no courtroom accounting—only the continuing work of investigators to document what happened and why, and the quieter reckoning of a campus trying to make sense of a life cut short. Those who spoke about Umurzokov remembered a student with big plans for medicine and a future that had seemed wide open just hours before the shots rang out.
