Three students who were injured in last year’s deadly shooting at Brown University are suing the university in separate lawsuits, claiming the school was negligent and did not provide proper security for the student body, even after a worker reported suspicious activity by the eventual shooter.
The three lawsuits obtained by Boston 25 News note that the gunman, Claudio Neves Valente, was repeatedly seen around the school in the days and weeks before the deadly shooting.
According to at least one of the lawsuits, a custodian noted seeing Valente inside the Barus and Holley building “pacing hallways, peering into classrooms, and moving in and out of bathrooms in a manner he considered suspicious.”
The custodian allegedly reported Valente to campus security, noting that he appeared to be “casing” the building but school officials did not take any steps to investigate the report.
“Brown, by and through its agents, servants, and employees, breached its duties by failing to implement and maintain reasonable and appropriate security measures at Barus and Holley, including but not limited to failing to provide adequate access control, surveillance, monitoring, and security presence, thereby rendering the premises unsecure and otherwise unsafe for Plaintiff, other students, faculty and others lawfully present there,” one of the lawsuits states, in part.
The lawsuits also point to a lack of security cameras around the Barus and Holley building.
Authorities also linked Valente to the killing of an MIT professor in Brookline. He was later found dead in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.
Two students, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, were killed in the shooting and nine others were injured.
Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
©2026 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/7QOJU3BNCJERBNKJC5LWTBYFLU.png)
