New video footage from the day of the shooting at Brown University that killed two students and injured nine others was released Monday, with city officials saying they redacted the most violent images to avoid harming the victims and “preserve the trust we have built in our community.”
“It is extremely important to me that the City of Providence remains fully transparent, accountable, and compliant with the state’s Access to Public Records Act,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said in a statement. “We also know that the footage and audio recordings we have to release are potentially harmful and traumatic for the victims, families and neighbors who are still trying to heal and recover from this incident.”
Media outlets across the United States and other countries were requesting body camera footage, audio clips and other public records shortly after the shooting occurred in mid-December.
The newly released material includes audio of a campus police officer calling city police at 4:07 p.m. “This is Brown Police. We have confirmed that gunshots occurred at 184 Hope Street,” the officer said. “We have a victim but we don’t know where they are.”
Four minutes later, campus police called again with an update: “We have a description of a suspect, dressed in all black and ski mask, direction of travel unknown.”
Separately, the city released nearly 20 minutes of body camera footage of the officer responsible for the initial response to the shooting. Heavily edited footage shows a chaotic and confusing scene of officers not knowing if the shooter is still in the building and trying to quickly find a safe place to send students into the building. Backpacks, gloves and other items could be seen scattered as officers combed the building looking for the shooter and potential victims.
“Let’s carry out these rescue operations, where do we organize the rescue?” says the unidentified officer in the video.
He later warned other officers, “The shooter may still be in the building, so be careful.”
Long parts of the video are blacked out or the audio is redacted. The video is often obscured by the officer’s arms in front of the camera. The city has not released any other body camera footage.
Another audio recording captures officers describing a possible sighting of the shooter on the second floor of another building and a report of a suspect being taken into custody. It’s not clear when officers realized they had the wrong person in custody, but within minutes, an officer told them: “We’re going to work on the assumption that’s not him. We’re going to do a secondary search.”
The city released those records Monday, saying it waited at the request of the victims’ families until after a memorial service was held the previous week on the Brown University campus.
On December 13, gunman Claudio Nieves Valente, 48, entered a class session in an academic building at Brown and opened fire on students, killing 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman Muhammed Aziz Omurzukov and wounding nine others.
A newly released police incident report echoed emotional moments previously shared by law enforcement about victims in the hospital responding to images of the suspected shooter.
One victim “froze quickly, was pushed back” and began crying and shaking when she confirmed that the photo matched the person who shot her. Another victim “took a deep breath, closed his eyes, changed his breathing pattern, and confirmed that the shooter he saw in the hallway appeared to be the person who appeared in the photos shown.”
Authorities say Nieves Valiente, who was a graduate student at Brown University studying physics during the 2000-2001 academic year, also shot and killed MIT professor Nuno F. J. Lourero at Lourero’s Boston-area home.
Nieves Valiente, who attended school with Loureiro in Portugal in the 1990s, was found dead days after the shooting at a storage facility in New Hampshire.
The Justice Department has since said Nieves Valiente planned the attack for years and left behind videos in which he admitted to the murders but did not give a motive. The FBI recovered the electronic device containing the video series during a search of the storage facility where Nieves Valiente’s body was found.
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