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I work on campus (very very close to the engineering building) and I previously lived near Brookline. So all of this hits home.
But what got me was the tipster who blew wide open the case is reportedly a homeless Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building (a la South Korean film Parasite). It made me so sad but also not surprised, that building does have a single occupancy bathroom with showers; and no keycard access was needed in the evening until 7pm.
So it made sense to me that he or she would've used that building for shelter and comfort. Also it didn't boggle my mind at all that a Brown grad (from the picture, the tipster looked like a artistic Brown student vs. the careerist type) would be homeless - given that I known many of my classmates who have a certain personality, brilliant but also idealistic/uncompromising that made them brittle unfortunately in a society that rewards conformity, settling and stability.
I can't get over the fact that two Brown student whom presumably have fallen on the wayside of society have chosen two different paths, (1) the homeless guy who still perseveres even in the basement of Barrus & Holley for 15 years a la Parasite after 2010 graduation but still has the situational awareness and rises to the occasion to give the biggest tip to the Providence Police, (2) the other guy who harbors so much resentment over a course of 25 years to plan a trip from Florida to gun down innocent kids who are 18 and 19 and his classmate when they were 18 and 19 year old.
There was a homeless guy living in the gym at Rutgers prior to the late 1990s and it's why you had to show ID to get into any of the gyms/dorms.
Very similar story of:
- he was older
- dressed normally
- everyone assumed he was an assistant coach, grad student etc
They mentioned it multiple times in safety briefings and even at "how to be a club officer" meetings to ensure that everyone participating/involved was actually a student.
But resentment over what? I haven't seen anything on this.
This article was helpful:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/mit-professor-shooting...
That definitely doesn't explain things. It appears the motive is still unknown
(But I did find this article better than the WaPo one)
I don't know much about the suspect, but I do know that people have been saying for years that they go into deep debt to get degrees, even in things that are supposed to be respected or in demand, and then it turns out there is actually no job market or success path for that degree. I assume the implication is it had something to do with this kind of frustration. (Though the suspect went to school two decades ago and did not receive a degree)
Since this site has a lot of people who have successful tech careers, many of us are isolated from these stresses.
But honestly, this guy's turn to violence makes me suspect he had some serious issues driving him, possibly in the mental health realm. Most people, even economically distressed people, won't turn to murder.
I think there’s a lot of projecting going on in these comments. The truth is we don’t know the motivation. Guessing at student debt seems unlikely given that he didn’t finish the degree, left the country, and made vague posts about deception on physics message boards around the time.
You misread me. I said "with this kind of frustration", meaning a broad category of frustration with the system of academia and education. That is not that 100% of the problem is student debt. It's that aspiring academics and scientists can have a hard time supporting themselves.
I haven't heard any clear motives yet. Some people are saying it's simply a case of someone who was a genius that ended up in a mediocre place in life, leading to to killing. Still that story is so common in America I don't see how it leads to killing innocent children at your alma mater? It makes no sense to me.
But as with many of these situations the truth might not make sense-- sometimes it's simply irrational thinking by someone mentally unwell. It reminds me a bit of the Reiner killings as well, considering there too there's no clear motive except maybe a hypothetical mental break. Truthfully, we might just never have a satisfying answer as to why this tragedy happened.
This whole post is filled with a ridiculous amount of unfounded assumptions.
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"...the tipster who blew wide open the case is reportedly a homeless Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building..." Where did you read this?
https://kfanplus.iheart.com/content/2025-12-19-homeless-man-...
It was posted on a Fox News affiliate. He won't get the reward, because he called 911 rather than the tipline.
FWIW, The New York Post video on this said he will get the reward.
That doesn't surprise me at all.
Makes me furious, but it doesn't surprise me.
I assume he will also no longer be able to live in the engineering hall basement. Beyond personal moral satisfaction, coming forward only means sacrifice.
But a number of people have lost their lives, which keeps the scale of the tipster's personal losses in perspective. A terrible event all around.
https://news.sky.com/story/how-a-reddit-post-blew-brown-univ...
> How a Reddit post blew Brown University shooting investigation wide open
> Frustration had mounted that the murderer had managed to get away and that a clear image of his face hadn't emerged - until a Reddit post finally put police on his trail.
That says he's a reddit poster, not a Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building.
What I heard is he called the police tip line and left a message but didn't hear back for two days. After two days he left this tip and then was made a person of interest. This is just what I heard, not sure if there's more to this story.
And...?? How does "he was a Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building" follow? Wtf?
Those two descriptions are not mutually contradictory.
Im a bit worried for the homeless guy, he helped solve the case but he likely blew up his cover and will have to find a new shelter.
Lazlo Hollyfield.
Life imitates art.
We'll have to wait to see how the Brown student's life turns out after. We'll see if he drives a way in an RV. Doubtful he'll be living in the basement after this though
I think Christina Paxson should hire him to be a director of patrol or more realistically a community liason for Brown campus police. The RI/FBI circus were all mum on whether the guy will receive the 50K reward - very on-brand. He wants privacy so I don't know even if there will be a GoFundMe but I think they should do the right thing and give the guy his 50 grand at the very least.
there is so much systemic failure and it says a lot about the people who are elevated by society and the people who are demonized.
I agree 100%. The biggest example here is if you read and go back to the threads of HN before the downfalls of SBF and Liz Holmes, you'll see so many people on here worshipping them and apologists for their bad behavior. Most are corporate types are conformists who buy what they are told ('till the narrative are changed). It used to bother me but nowadays I just keep it pushing and aim for the tails and let the mid-curve people be the mid-curve people.
Some day while the dreaded soc* or comm* words have been abandoned, a better description might come along to account for the fact that in fact while the system is positive sum, reality can still seem zero sum to a large portion and there is only so much you can stifle the same human creativity, energy and desire to sustain themselves.
Many people are terrible judges of character. They either undervalue it, see it as weakness, or just aren’t able to discern the potential for malevolence.
Now compare these two divergent "endings": would you rather be gone from this cold and cruel Earth, finally free, or denied reward money for failing to call the correct phone number, still homeless and (probably) hungry? Obviously I am not saying to off a bunch of people prior, but still.
My response is there were many people (primarily engineering students and professors) who might have seen the shooter during the previous weeks - but it is only the former student who given his background of being homeless and being extra vigilante as a homeless person noticed the shooter as suspicious and even followed him to his car that led to the tip.
Many in tech will quote Steve Jobs "you can't connect the dots forward, only backwards" speech, but this guy whom I don't know, I like to believe he lived it. Flip your question on your head, would you be willing be homeless for 10 years and in the process help catch a school shooter?
that's why there will be a day of judgement that God has set
My assumption is most Ivy leaguers (specifically undergrads) generally have no monetary constraints after graduating so this very much reads to me as a bohemian “by choice” decision to be more interesting than an actual tragic story.
I graduated from an Ivy and, after graduation, I was (and continue to be, to this day) dirt poor.
Statistically, you're correct. That said, the thing about statistics is that outliers exist.
Also, imo the "Ivy" advantage is moreso a "family background" advantage - traditionally high social prestige and high entry barrier vocations were gatekept by Ivy and Ivy-adjacent membership.
The rise of competitive salary and low barrier of entry vocations like Software and Accounting helped dampen the value of that "Ivy" premium.
I live in the area. Crazy how many helicopters and drones showed up so quick and how many police there were. For several hours more and more police and FBI vehicles kept arriving. Probably ended up with close to 100 officers on scene. Salem NH PD, Methuen MA PD, Providence RI PD, NH state police, MA state police, FBI, and US Marshal service were the ones I saw.
I think it's the biggest response I've personally seen since the Boston Marathon Bombing.
all of that and they basically just got lucky. the guy walked to brown from his car parked nearby and shot up some kids, waited days, went to a guy's house in Massachusetts, killed him and never even got caught - he committed suicide and was only found days after his second killing
if anything this whole saga makes me happy smart people aren't killers more often because this guy basically got away...
I keep seeing this sort of sentiment everywhere and I'm trying to understand it. The same thing happened after Charlie Kirk was killed and the arrest there hinged on a confession by the killer to his dad. A lot of commentary then that the police/FBI got lucky. Ditto Mangione. They got lucky he was found in a random McDonalds.
What exactly is the expectation here? Is there some sort of wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of Law and Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling up your sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?
Would assume for the majority of planned murder to be resolved as quickly as these highly publicized cases have been (the Kirk deal took about 2 days also) there's going to have to be an element of luck. Piecing together digital/forensic evidence is going to require time and effort. If it's not an obvious connection (domestic violence etc.) and there's no direct witnesses it seems logical you only have a few outcomes:
A) Going to be solved due to a lucky break
B) Going to be solved after a ton of time/interviews/piecing together forensic evidence
C) Not be solved.
Also he only "got away" because he killed himself. They likely would have caught him fairly soon after this because they had his identity from the car tags. I guess the point is though luck is all you have if it's solved this quickly because it's so random.
The sentiment is basically that the "all hands on deck" manpower effort is futile and if anything even a political/propaganda effort to dissuade others from having similar thoughts. What good is it to mobilize 1000 FBI agents if they aren't going to move the case forward at all? What good is having a budget capable of mobilizing that many people for a single case and not to bear any fruit with it? Is this outcome better than what might have happened if this were relegated to local PD? Surprisingly the answer is "no, not at all." That is a big indictment on federal law enforcement and their abilities to turn their budget into actionable effort that makes the population safer. And probably suggests that such resource draining manhunts might even come at the cost of whatever the FBI does in fact do well.
Half of life is collective "give a damn". If you see 1000 FBI agents, read 47 headlines, and hear a dozen gas station conversations then you start to tune in. That's when the tips start coming in, as everyone wants to be part of the big "thing".
There is always going to be a PR element in police efforts.
In a democracy you need to show the voters you're doing work.
Isn’t that hindsight bias?
> Is there some sort of wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of Law and Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling up your sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?
There is to a point, and it's not some random organic sentiment: this is the image that has been crafted for decades, if not centuries. The police has a role in pushing it, but it's also has been a useful fiction for our societies as a whole.
"crime will somewhat get punished" has more weight with a competent agency with at least average intelligent people.
You're missing a 4th and unsettling option:
D) Going to be "solved" by catching someone unfortunate who seems plausible enough and lacks an alibi.
I disagree that his catching was inevitable. They only knew an identity yesterday. If the suspect wasn’t a coward it’s plausible they could’ve just driven away to literally any other part of the United States and then flew back to Portugal. I have no comment on the Kirk case.
As for the expectation, other than if civil liberties are going to be violated in the name of safety I expect much faster results, and I’m sure the MIT professors family would agree.
How could they possibly have solved it faster than this? There's no magic to this and it takes time like anything else. Yes there's digital footage but someone has to go through it. The murder in Massachusetts isn't immediately obviously related.
Of course the family wants it solved right away but there's a reality to this that seems to be overlooked here but is also not unique here. A lot of murders are never solved. Luck is a factor all the time.
I am not saying luck isn't a factor - you're missing my point which is we're compromising privacy and going further into a surveillance state, yet it's not like the actual outcomes are improving.
I'm not really sure what you think I'm arguing.
Just checking, are you sure this is the story: "hinged on a confession by the killer to his dad." It seems that story is a-changing and that's an important note. My point might be that what is put out as the story often comes with an agenda.
If you watch some of the real life detective / crime shows. The people who murder people and get caught be cops, basically shoot people in broad daylight on camera, tell people about it, then immediately fold in interrogation.
People often fold during an interrogation/questioning unless they are career criminals and have been through the system and learn from their prior mistakes/luck.
Innocent people often fold during interrogation.
Sure, but in the 21st century people are typically not thrown in prison on the basis of a confession only. The prosecutors have to have corroborating evidence.
We do have criminals who fold, either they're too confident, they trip up, etc. Recently some guy killed his sugar-momma in Fla, then took her car and drive it cross country to Seattle and along the way used her CC. He gave it all away in the jail interview.
In the 21st century, innocent people routinely accept plea deals to avoid the risk of trial. The corroborating evidence need not be strong because the threat of the trial penalty is enough when you can't afford a good lawyer.
>The prosecutors have to have corroborating evidence.
Bla bla bla, prosecutors are the good guys and show all the evidence they have....
Um, not.
We keep finding again and again we're putting innocent people in jail even for things as serious as capital crimes, and later it was found the investigation was botched and there was no evidence that person was guilty and other evidence was never presented.
I believe the theory that Mangione even wanted to be caught and arrested because he didn't see a viable life for himself anymore with his spinal problems and medical bills. Who social engineers their way into getting a CEO's itinerary and then keeps a manifesto on their person well after the crime
Now he doesn't have to worry about paying for that. Or getting reasonable treatment but hey,
It's a fun theory that everyone likes to support but it falls apart when you read his Reddit account and realize he had insurance that paid for spinal fusion surgery and claimed to have no pain afterwards without the assistance of medication. That's probably also why he doesn't appear in any pain in his appearances since the incident, not because the NY DOC (infamous for their terrible healthcare) magically got him surgery instantly.
He became radicalized over time and even wrote that his pain was improved. Somewhere along the way he read something or got it into his head that he had to murder the United Healthcare CEO where he never was a customer. It was just one if not the largest healthcare insurance company.
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I can’t speak to his thinking, but being caught with the gun used, and a confession letter…
Tells me he knew he was going to be caught and is angling for a hung jury.
In my country if the police is really serious, and I mean national crisis level of serious, they can go full China and track everyone. They have the means.
Like presumably the US has doorbell camera databases and every car on the highway is electronically flagged?
But they found him? If he was alive, he probably would have been caught eventually, no?
I mean I guess all criminals die or are caught, yes.
Being smart doesn't guarantee you'll get away with murder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb
Na, if you're smart you just start a company and have it kill people via industrial accident, then it's just a fine.
Actually being smart guarantees you won't have to.
"this guy basically got away"
Titanic basically sailed safely across the Atlantic, except for a bit of bad luck.
The Titanic disaster was a confluence of many instances of bad luck. Including the idea that if the lookout had noticed the berg a few seconds later, it wouldn't have sunk.
(Because then it would have hit the berg head on, crushing the front, but not ripping most of the side open.)
Same perspective here just 15 miles northwest of scene. Pretty sure they confirmed officially presence of MA NH LEO, NHSP, MASP, FBI, CIA, ATF, and Secret Service.
Every agency has to show how relevant they are.
Like the song 99 red balloons:
>Everyone's a superhero
>Everyone's a "Captain Kirk"
My apologies to the guy who first proposed that the shootings were related--I thought that was a real stretch.
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yeah, very surprising
Obviously a lot of footage in investigations does not reach the public, during active ones or even after. But if you've followed these stories it seems liket between the Brown shooting and the Kirk/Utah shooting, there is a potential concern with universities not having security footage in certain areas of their campus? Has anyone else inquired more into this?
I'm sure Flock's sales team has made inquiries.
That’s funny, picturing their sales team smirking and rubbing their hands mischievously at every publicized manhunt
Well, Candace Owens and Valhalla VFT are talking about exactly those things and the MSM is saying their concerns are baseless. I can't believe I actually watched Candace Owens discuss some of this stuff, I shudder to write that.
exactly what we need, more cameras everywhere
“This is a very advanced technology, and whatever nation masters it first is going to have an incredible advantage,” Loureiro says.
> John posted about the encounter on Reddit after the shooting
Anyone have the Reddit link? (I wonder why the article doesn't include it)
I feel sorry for this guy. His Reddit inbox is probably fucked, and he's absolutely going to get doxxed and hounded by news people, and I wouldn't be surprised if even worse things happened to him.
Good on him for reporting what he saw. He also went to the police the next day and reported it directly. But now the media machine is going to make him regret he ever said anything, which is unfortunate.
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This is admittedly very tangential only, but as a non-native speaker / not a US-American, I found this sentence from the NYT reporting[0] a bit confusing:
> John said that the suspect’s clothing was inappropriate for the weather and that they had made eye contact.
Why is the report mentioning the eye contact? Is that culturally significant, as in, in the US you don’t normally do eye contact with strangers, and if a stranger does make eye contact, it’s suspicious?
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/brown-mit-shooting-inv...
I think the eye contact in question was a prelude to the two of them kind of following each other around and a minor verbal altercation, so the later context shows that it was probably kind of suspicious eye contact, rather than a friendly "what's up?"
I think the eye contact bit is useful as a signal that the witness got a very good look at the suspect's face.
I suppose that made eye contact = the face was clearly visible for a second or two, and thus recognized with more certainty.
The thing that bothers me about the whole story, apart from the deaths of course, is that we live in a surveillance state. While I want major crimes to be resolved and there to be deterrents to future ones, I just don't know about turning the whole US into East Germany. It's not going to work out well for any of us. As you can see, it didn't help solve the crimes, either. It was witnesses who did all the heavy lifting here.
Our surveillance state is mostly for commercial and political reasons. It doesn’t exist for crime fighting
This is a good point and worth noting because we sacrifice so much for the supposed benefits.
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Another shooting with random or unclear motives, which conveniently fits an anti-immigrant narrative, also conveniently tied up with a bow... Don't get too caught up in the specifics of the spectacle, and take a long view of really weird coincidence.
Is there really much of an anti-immigrant narrative here?
You'd think the washington post would have figured out how to turn off ads on somber articles by now
Legacy media gets a pass from advertisers.
Oh how naive you are...
Worth noting that a partner at Sequoia (Shaun Maguire) publicly accused the wrong guy of being the shooter.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91463942/sequoia-shaun-maguire-b...
Shaun Maguire has a long history of inflammatory comments and pushing false information on Twitter.
Every time he’s involved in a new scandal I’m surprised all over again that he’s still a partner and Sequoia still hasn’t pressured him to stop.
I'm impressed he hasn't been fired and sued into bankruptcy.
I can't express how puzzled I am that Maguire is still at Sequoia. Forget cancellation; anyone should be free to say whatever they want. This is about judgment, humility, discretion and dare I say empathy, which are fundamental skills in any investment process and which a partner at the most storied venture fund in the word ought to have.
In what world is it good or right to dox a random undergrad based on speculation, simply because maybe just maybe it will net you Internet points? Note that Maguire never apologized once it became clear he was wrong; he simply deleted the post. He gets to keep the engagement and outrage points and move on, paying no price for spreading a dangerous lie. The undergrad he and others doxxed can't say the same.
Shaun would be just another rage-baiter if it wasn't for the Sequoia imprimatur. With an investor like this on your cap table, who needs enemies? It shouldn't matter if Shaun is the "Elon guy" at Sequoia or indeed the best investor in the world. Integrity should and does precede returns in time. But maybe I am naive and this just isn't true for megacap venture as an asset class, where so much depends on sidling up to the 50 or 100 founders who can reliably produce decacorns to return your fund.
Perhaps all we can do is vote with our feet. Sequoia is on my cap table today, but if I was fortunate to have the choice between them and a similar firm that actually demonstrated integrity instead of just talking about it, I would not take money from them again. In all likelihood they won't care a whit about me, but they may care more about some of you, reading this.
Graeme Wood (always a good read) on this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/conspiracy-rumors-...
> Maguire subsequently partially apologized for those comments in a video. “This tweet did not land the way I thought it would,”
What an asshole. He could have gotten the kid killed, not to mention the damage to his social reputation. And he can't even manage a "sorry if you were offended" non-apology.
The "did not land" video they're talking about, that was his response to people being mad at him for calling Mamdani an Islamist (and being "from a culture that lies about everything"). Also, "partially" is doing a lot of work there: he starts that video saying "cancel culture is alive and well" and doesn't in fact back off at all from his claim: the "did not land" part is even just Maguire lamenting that he accidentally helped Mamdani by targeting him.
Anyway, when he went after the Brown student saying he was "very likely" the shooter (also bringing in Mamdani again), he did less: he simply deleted the video.
Oh - thank you very much for the correction, I must have been reading the article too quickly!
The whole VC industry is poison at this point.
It's like a lottery for rich people.
I hate everyone involved in this. It’s like a confluence of every type of perma-victim with immense privilege.
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I'm mostly surprised that someone can so consistently and repeatedly demonstrate an inability to filter information he receives and still be trusted with LPs' money. It's another form of Gell-Mann amnesia.
Rich guys are mainly incompetent. They'll tell you they're rich because of meritocracy, but I've found that too much money has the opposite effect. You end up surrounded by yes-men and can buy your way out of any failure, so your skills (if you ever had em) atrophy.
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Everyone knows sequoia can't invest... but this is too far
> Maguire, acting as a self-appointed digital detective, has shared posts suggesting that an entirely different man was behind the crimes—a Palestinian student at Brown University...
> On July 4, Maguire made inflammatory comments calling New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani an “Islamist.”
Jokes aside, maguire does seem like an emphatically despicable person
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Unvelievably's current comment says
>> Maguire clearly "comes from a culture that lies about everything."
I'm trying to understand the downvotes and if people think you said what they said
Everyone is talking in some kind of weird in-group code or in-jokes that I can't understand so I'll decipher it for the rest of us normies.
> Maguire clearly "comes from a culture that lies about everything."
This is a reference to Shaun Maguire's Twitter post where he said that Zohran Mamdani "comes from..."
https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1941135110922969168
> > Maguire is Jewish, with ancestral ties to early Jewish settlers in California.
> Sir, we are going to have to ask you to leave.
This comment appears to be reacting to the first one by assuming the first one is saying that Jewish people lie about everything, and it responds by saying this is unacceptable to say.
I have been off Twitter for 2 months and when I go there I can't understand anything. People are always saying "can I say something?" and "we know what this means" and shit like that and either the 2 months have killed my brain or something because I never know what the first guy isn't going to say and the second guy knows.
Now Hacker News is similarly incomprehensible and I'm starting to think my mind is no longer able to handle human speech. If this is happening to anyone else, then I hope the interpretation helped. If it didn't, then maybe I'm just losing my mind.
Thanks for the explanation -- I also had no idea what this meant.
I am disturbed that in-group code has been normalized as a way to state socially abhorrent positions out in the open, as if it offered plausible deniability.
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sadly flock ended up being helpful here (according to the police per the article). also interesting that it was some random homeless guy who happened to be there that blew the whole thing wide open. despite all of the surveillance...
How can you not read this and just see it's a huge puff piece for Flock. As far as I can read from the first article and reports they were not pivotal in tracking down the killer. It was once again only someone else who knew that person and came forward, exactly the same as Tyler Robison case
"Phil Helsel Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said a person who had information about the suspect played a crucial role in the case."
The commentor you are replying to is likely in support of Flock.
lol why do you say that?
The police state in the article it was helpful in linking the crimes. What evidence do you have to contradict their testimony?
Was it helpful? The man committed two shootings and they caught him after he committed suicide. It didn't prevent a crime.
It connected the two incidents per license plate readings per the article. Why do you think it wasn’t?
My question is how many other license plates also would have been connected this way? What's the false positive rate?
Why is that relevant for this case?
If there's any claim that "flock found these two plates were seen in both areas!!111" then how many other plates were seen in both areas in the same timeframe? How much of this is throwing away results that disagree with the narrative?
Again, not sure how that’s relevant.
Who ever credibly claims that cameras prevent crime though?
> some random homeless guy
Was he homeless? I haven't seen that mentioned in the articles.
New York Post states it in a YouTube video titled 'All About Brown, MIT Shooting Suspect Claudio Neves Valente – who BARKED During Massacre'.
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