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A Brown University janitor said he twice warned campus security about the gunman who killed two students prior to the incident.
Derek Lisi, who has worked at the Ivy League school for 15 years, told the Boston Globe he spotted Claudio Neves Valente pacing school hallways and peering into classrooms nearly a dozen times, claiming he "knew something was off" prior to the incident on December 13.
“He’d been casing that place for weeks,’ Lisi said of Neves Valente, who he said was looking into classrooms and “circling the hallways."
“I thought it was someone trying to steal something. Every time he saw me, I think he thought I was security, because he would always walk away," he continued. “I said, ‘Something’s off with this guy, so I gotta say something.’”
Neither Brown University nor the private security firm present on campus responded to the Boston Globe's request for comment.
The two students killed in the Brown University shooting were identified as Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov last week. Cook, a sophomore student and the vice president of Brown University's Republican club, was identified by her Alabama parish and a former classmate as the first victim killed in the shooting. A priest at her Alabama parish described her as a "tremendous bright light" during a mass that was livestreamed on Facebook.
Former Brown University student Alex Shieh, who dropped out of the college last semester, also confirmed that Cook was the vice president of the Ivy League university's Republican club, noting that she was one of a few people willing to associate with him after he sent a DOGE-inspired email to thousands of administrators.
“Everyone at Brown who knew Ella, regardless of their politics, found her to be friendly and kind. My thoughts are with Ella’s family. Ella was a promising young leader taken too soon,” Shieh wrote in a since-deleted post on X.
Umurzokov, of Uzbekistan, was identified by Jonathan Henick, the U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan, in a statement shared last Monday (December 15).
"I am deeply saddened by reports of the tragic death of Brown University student Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov on December 13," Henick said. "We extend our sincere condolences to Mr. Umurzokov's family, friends, and fellow students and mourn the loss of his bright future."
President Donald Trump addressed the incident, as well as the mass shooting targeting Jewish victims at Bondi Beach in Australia and the deaths of three U.S. soldiers in Syria, during a Christmas event at the White House on December 14.
“I want to just pay my respects to the people, unfortunately, two are no longer with us, Brown University, nine injured, and two are looking down on us right now from Heaven,” Trump said via the New York Post. “And likewise, in Australia, that was a terrible attack. 11 dead, 29 badly wounded, and that was an anti-Semitic attack, obviously. And I just want to pay my respects to everybody.
“It was a rough day.”