By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Helen Coster
Dec 16 (Reuters) – Authorities on Tuesday once again asked members of the public for help identifying the suspected gunman who killed two Brown University students in a classroom over the weekend, as the manhunt stretched past 72 hours and residents remained on edge.
In a late-afternoon press conference, officials in Providence, Rhode Island, said they still have not identified the attacker. They played several video clips taken from neighborhood cameras that show the possible shooter walking near the site of the shooting on Saturday, wearing dark clothes and a face mask.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said investigators were hoping someone might recognize the person based on his body movements, posture and bearing.
He also said that police have evidence the person was in the area as early as 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, more than five hours before the attack, and that he was likely “casing” the scene.
Officials said they are confident the person in the video is the gunman, but they also have “zero” evidence as to the motive for the shooting, according to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha.
Earlier on Tuesday, authorities released a timeline video comprised of surveillance clips from neighborhood cameras and a car’s dashcam tracking the person’s movements both before and immediately after the shooting.
In one clip, the man can be seen at a distance walking from the building’s parking lot toward the street, even as police cars with flashing emergency lights arrive at the scene. The final clip shows the man walking along that street just three minutes after the shooting.
Officials said there were limited cameras inside the engineering and physics building where the shooting took place, and that none had recorded any clear footage of the gunman.
RESIDENTS ANXIOUS AS SEARCH REACHES FOURTH DAY
Police have received more than 200 tips and are working through them, Perez said. Neronha defended the speed of the investigation, saying it was difficult but that it was “going really well” and asked the public for patience.
But the days-long search has prompted many residents in the College Hill neighborhood near campus to stay behind locked doors, while many Brown undergraduate students hastily cleared out of the city after the school canceled classes and exams for the rest of the year.
Authorities initially detained another person of interest, a man in his 20s, early on Sunday, but they eventually released him after concluding that he was not involved.
The news that there was no suspect in custody brought fresh anxiety to nearby residents, who opened their doors on Monday to police officers seeking any camera footage that might have captured the shooter.
Patrick Moran has been supervising his young children’s video games, Lego building, puzzle playing and ear-piercing drumming after their private school, the Wheeler School, canceled classes for the rest of the week.
“I am happy to have them home. The shooter is still out there, and so let’s take a little precaution and keep the kids home,” Moran said.
Public schools in Providence remained open on Tuesday, but the district canceled after-school activities.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley sought to calm residents’ fears, telling reporters on Tuesday that there have not been any credible threats to the school or the city since Saturday’s shooting.
ENHANCED SECURITY IN PLACE
In addition to the two deaths, eight students were injured in the attack, and seven remain in the hospital, with one person in critical condition, officials said.
Brown said it had implemented enhanced security measures since the shooting, including doubling the university department of public safety’s staffing and restricting entry to campus buildings.
The gunman had walked into an engineering building whose doors were unlocked while exams were taking place, according to police. He opened fire with a 9mm gun inside a classroom and then fled, triggering a campus lockdown that left students barricaded in rooms or hiding beneath furniture for hours.
Brown, which has nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students, is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the United States.
The two students killed were Ella Cook, a sophomore from Mountain Brook, Alabama, and freshman Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a Uzbekistan-born Virginian.
Cook, 19, was the vice president of the school’s College Republicans and a “leading Republican voice at Brown,” according to an X post from the New York Republicans Club. In her hometown, she worked at an ice cream shop in high school, where her coworkers used to tell customers with pride that she was headed to a top-rated school.
Umurzokov, 18, had moved with his family as a child to Virginia, where he graduated Midlothian High School this spring as a top-10 student. He had planned to become a neurosurgeon.
“He always lent a helping hand to anyone in need without hesitation, and was the most kind-hearted person our family knew,” his family wrote in an online fundraising post. “Our family is incredibly devastated by this loss.”
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Helen Coster and Maria Tsvetkova; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Bill Berkrot)
