Neves Valente does not provide a clear motive for the attack in the video, which is rambling and doesn’t necessarily make sense. But he made one thing clear: “I’m not going to apologize.”
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente said he had no remorse for last month’s mass shooting that killed two Brown University students and injured nine others, and for killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days later, according to new records released by the Justice Department.
“Good luck…I didn’t like any of you,” Neves Valente, 48, says in the recording, in part, as her last words, according to a recording made public on Tuesday, January 6.
“I can say I was very happy, but I don’t regret what I did,” said Neves Valente, a Portuguese national and former Brown University student. “I’m not going to apologize, because no one in my lifetime has ever sincerely apologized to me.”
Neves Valente, who was recording videos in a New Hampshire storage facility, was found dead by authorities from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Dec. 18, just five days after authorities said his killing spree began at Brown University. On December 13, Neves Valente opened fire on students preparing for their final exams, killing students Ella Cook and Muhammad Aziz Umurzokov and wounding nine others.
Two days later, on December 15, authorities announced that Neves Valente shot and killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro at his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline, Massachusetts, about 80 miles north of Brown University. Neves Valente Loureiro attended the same academic program at a Portuguese university from 1995 to 2000.
Neves Valente does not provide a clear motive for the attack in the video, which is rambling and doesn’t necessarily make sense.
Here’s what else Neves Valente had to say:
Neves Valente ‘needed a catalyst’ for crime
Neves Valente did not say what his motive was, but according to the transcript, he said, “I needed a catalyst.”
“But in the first case, it’s the fact that I was faced, and in the second case, I was also faced, I guess you could say there was a little bit. So…” he said before the video ended.
Previously, he mentioned the possibility of fame.
“I don’t care what you judge me or what you think about me,” he said. “I don’t care at all about fame, accomplishments, manifestos and all that (expletive) stuff. I have zero patience for that.”
He said he probably had a lot more to say and write, but “I don’t care.”
“I’m not going to give you that right,” he said.
Neves Valente appears to be making fun of his student victims
At one point in the video, Neves Valente apparently mocked the students who fired the shots, saying they could have easily escaped through a nearby exit.
“I thought people had left, because they were kind of stupid,” he said with a laugh, according to the transcript. “There’s an emergency exit…the people who were hiding under the table, or whatever, could have totally gotten out of there.”
Neves Valente says she likes it when President Trump calls her an animal.
Among Neves Valente’s ramblings was a comment that he particularly liked when President Donald Trump said, “He said I was an animal, and that’s true. I’m an animal, and he’s an animal.”
Neves Valente appeared to be referring to President Trump’s remarks in May 2018, when he once again called for stricter immigration laws and called immigrants “animals.”
Neves Valente went on to say, “I have no hatred towards America.” Later he added: “I have no love for that either.”
He continued to say that coming to the United States was a mistake.
Neves Valente was preparing to commit suicide in the vault.
Neves Valente spent much of his time talking about his impending death and complaining about the injuries he sustained when he shot Loureiro.
“Honestly, my only regret is that this hit me,” he said with a laugh, according to the transcript.
He went on to say that it was time for him to leave “at his own discretion.”
“Now let’s see if I have the courage to do this myself, because it was very difficult to do it to all these people…I envy people who do it without difficulty, and these people really exist. That’s what I really envy. The rest means nothing to me. Let’s see if I have the courage.”
Who is Neves Valente?
Brown University President Christina Paxson told USA TODAY last month that Neves Valente was a student in Brown’s doctoral program from 2000 to 2001, but had since taken a leave of absence. He dropped out of school in 2003.
Paxson said Neves-Valente only took physics classes as a student and would have spent time at the Barth and Holly building where the shooting occurred.
Authorities said Neves Valente entered the United States legally from Portugal on a Diversity Visa Lottery Program (DV1) visa. He entered the program in 2017 and received a green card, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“This heinous individual should never have been tolerated in our country,” she said.
Contributor: Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY
