By Rich McKay and Helen Coster
Dec 17 (Reuters) – The gunman who killed two Brown University students remained at large on Wednesday, and there was no indication that authorities have grown closer to identifying the suspect four days after he opened fire inside a classroom and escaped into the surrounding streets in Providence, Rhode Island.
It is rare but not unprecedented for the perpetrator of a high-profile attack to evade capture for multiple days. But the lack of any identification has left residents in the area on edge, with some staying behind locked doors and keeping their kids home from school.
“This is outside of the norm,” said Felipe Rodriguez, a former New York Police detective who now teaches at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Mass shooters, by large, are usually killed at the scene or quickly captured.”
Early on Sunday, a day after the shooting, investigators appeared to have broken the case open when they announced a “person of interest” was in custody. But authorities released the unnamed person, a man in his 20s, that evening after evidence showed he was not involved and resumed the manhunt.
Officials said on Tuesday the investigation has been hampered by a lack of security cameras in the building and in the nearby area.
Investigators have released video clips, mostly taken from residential doorbell cameras, showing the possible shooter walking in a neighborhood near campus both before and immediately after the attack. In one video, the person can be seen walking away from the building right after the shooting as police cars with flashing lights arrive on the scene.
While the man in the footage is masked, officials hope someone might recognize his body, gait, movements or posture.
“Once we identify who this person is, I believe we’ll be able to locate him,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said at a Tuesday press conference. “It’s very hard to hide in this country.”
There are some other cases in which attackers have escaped, at least temporarily. The brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013 hid for four days in the Boston area and then killed a police officer when trying to flee. The older brother died after a gunfight with police that ended when his younger brother ran him over with a stolen car.
Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating a healthcare executive last year in Manhattan, eluded authorities for five days. Mangione was captured in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after he was spotted eating at a McDonald’s by a customer and an employee who believed he resembled the gunman.
More recently in September, conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s suspected shooter was taken into custody after a 33-hour manhunt. Suspect Tyler Robinson was captured after a relative and a family friend alerted the local sheriff’s office that he had made comments suggesting he had committed the murder, the Utah governor said at the time.
The shooting at Brown took place inside an engineering and physics building. The facility was expanded in recent years, but the attack occurred in the older part of the facility, officials said, where there are few or no cameras.
Cameras in the newer part of the building recorded the chaos that unfolded after the shooting, Neronha said, but did not capture any video of the gunman.
The building is at the edge of campus, which allowed the suspect to escape into the College Hill residential neighborhood, where there are few cameras aside from doorbell ones.
“Unfortunately here, given location and given the age of the building, we just don’t have additional footage,” Neronha said on Tuesday.
In a social media post on Wednesday, President Donald Trump criticized Brown for not having more cameras in place, adding, “There can be no excuse for that.”
Brown has 1,200 security cameras, according to Brown University President Christina Paxson, who defended the school’s precautions and safety measures that were in place before the shooting at Tuesday’s press conference.
“Brown is deeply committed to the safety and security and wellbeing of our community, and I’ve been deeply saddened to see people questioning that,” Paxson said. “We understand that as time goes on there is maybe a natural instinct to assign responsibility for a tragic event like this…But the shooter is responsible.”
Kenneth Gray, a former FBI agent who is now a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven, said it was possible the gunman chose the building and classroom in part because of the lack of cameras.
He said determining a motive might help the police break this case.
“Was it someone with a beef with Brown?” Gray said. “Was he a student, former student, and employee, a former employee? Why did he pick that target? That’s what police need to know.”
Neronha said on Tuesday that investigators have “zero” evidence related to motive.
(Reporting by Rich McKay and Helen Coster; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by David Gregorio)
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