RI - Mass Shooting at Brown University - Providence 13 Dec 2025

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  • #2,121
Sundog said:
Brown contractor Event Staffing Services confirmed that one of its employees did receive a report about a suspicious person in December, but said it is not responsible for investigating such reports.

You would think that a Brown University employee would know to report this kind of thing to campus law enforcement. Unless maybe the Brown University employee wasn't a permanent employee or something like that.
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Or at the very least, they would know to tell the janitor to contact campus police to report it instead.
 
  • #2,122
wallflowery2 said:
I don’t know the reporting structure, but if I am reading local news correctly, the custodian reported not to a Brown security guard or campus police, but to an external firm hired for an event. That would be different from reporting to a Brown employee or the security guard typically staffing a front desk at the buildings that have that position.

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But there is some obvious lack of common sense in the sutuation. A security guard said they were hired to watch the event but not the building. But the event is located in the building! If someone, God forbid, decides to blow up something in the building, or shoot outside the event hall but hit the outgoing participants, it does become the hired security's responsibility, immediately! If you are hired to "stay in the door and watch those walking in and out", then someone from the company has to check the part outside the hall and definitely have a connection with the campus police, just for such cases. Otherwise it looks (and seems to be the case) that the external security company provides talking mannequins. Sorry.
 
  • #2,123
Charlot123 said:
But there is some obvious lack of common sense in the sutuation. A security guard said they were hired to watch the event but not the building. But the event is located in the building! If someone, God forbid, decides to blow up something in the building, or shoot outside the event hall but hit the outgoing participants, it does become the hired security's responsibility, immediately! If you are hired to "stay in the door and watch those walking in and out", then someone from the company has to check the part outside the hall and definitely have a connection with the campus police, just for such cases. Otherwise it looks (and seems to be the case) that the external security company provides talking mannequins. Sorry.
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If there was someone elsewhere in the building who shouldn’t be there, but wasn’t trying to enter the event they were hired to staff, they may not have understood the risk in the moment. Hindsight makes the threat clear, but it’s common for unknown members of the community and visitors to be in academic buildings. That said, I agree they ought to have escalated it and/or communicated better with the janitor who reported. I’m sure this will be part of the after-event review underway.
Sundog said:
Brown contractor Event Staffing Services confirmed that one of its employees did receive a report about a suspicious person in December, but said it is not responsible for investigating such reports.

You would think that a Brown University employee would know to report this kind of thing to campus law enforcement. Unless maybe the Brown University employee wasn't a permanent employee or something like that.
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He may not have known that a contractor hired for an event isn’t a Brown employee.
 
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  • #2,124
This article gives a little more background on the Janitor's involvement. He reported CV three times to no avail. I wonder if Brown staff are instructed to contact the third party security contractors, since it seems like he tried awfully hard to flag the suspicious behavior.
Lisi said he reported the individual as suspicious to Event Staff Services LLC, or ESS — a third-party security vendor for Brown — on three separate occasions.
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Also of note:
After police released photos of the suspect captured on surveillance video, Lisi said he “dropped” because he recognized the man he had been hoping wasn’t the suspect. He immediately called the tip line, which led to him later meeting with detectives Dec. 15 to describe what he witnessed.
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So it sounds like LE probably had a good idea of who they were looking for (perhaps a sketch?) fairly early on.

I do really feel for Lisi - it seems like he had great instincts that something was wrong, went out of his way to notify someone.. and then no further action was taken. This quote really got me:
“I told detectives, it was like I could see him and nobody else could — it is an eerie feeling,” Lisi explained.
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  • #2,125
  • #2,126
no nonsense said:
Maybe he was a gambler/poker player? Physics folks are math whizzes and can calculate probabilities pretty efficiently.
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I am not sure if the book “Bringing down the House” wasn’t sponsored by the casinos because it showed them stupid in contrast to a group of MIT geniuses. Great attraction for new clients, lol.

But it would be interesting to find out how long Claudio stayed in Vegas. Maybe long enough to “start training” and lose all the money in the process?
 
  • #2,127
99cats said:
This article gives a little more background on the Janitor's involvement. He reported CV three times to no avail. I wonder if Brown staff are instructed to contact the third party security contractors, since it seems like he tried awfully hard to flag the suspicious behavior.

Also of note:

So it sounds like LE probably had a good idea of who they were looking for (perhaps a sketch?) fairly early on.

I do really feel for Lisi - it seems like he had great instincts that something was wrong, went out of his way to notify someone.. and then no further action was taken. This quote really got me:
Click to expand...

Lisi said that the person he saw (CV) was “visible” to him and yet not to the security. It makes a lot of sense.

The “algorithms” that we use to determine "in" or "out" depend on our oikos. (This Ancient Greek word used to mean “household” and today, it means “relational sphere” and “sphere of influence”.)

So for the janitor, the oikos at Brown is the physical building plus, the students and the professors. He saw someone who “didn’t belong to his oikos”. For the janitor, Valente was the “extra” factor.

Same with John. John was unhoused former Brown student. So his oikos was all Brown + people+ the area around it, and the man’s he saw fit neither. (He even looked into CV’s car).

What is the security man’s oikos?
He is probably looking for some kind of a terrorist, a menace. I don’t know what he’d look for professionally, but probably, the outline of a gun, maybe they scan purses. However, the fact that CV looks neither like a student nor like a teacher (or even a parent) escapes him. In the security’s world, If CV doesn’t have a gun on him (I suspect that he didn’t on that day), he fits in.

Possibly, for the security, CV who has the aura of a "mad scientist" can probably pass for one, but he deceived neither Derek nor John. In this context, it is interesting that John described CV’s clothes as being from Walmart (and it was not judgmental.) To guess what John thought: students from Brown dress on a budget, but they don’t shop for clothes in Walmart.

JMO: the security indeed didn’t see CV but it doesn’t mean that they are bad “security watchers”. They just made a wrong assumption. From their self-contained perspective, they were dismissive of the "insider" Lisi's information.

Two weeks later, all the security was asking the public to help. Sad, indeed.

So I feel for Lisi, too. Among other things, it shows that he is a great janitor for Brown who loves and knows the place.
 
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  • #2,128
Charlot123 said:
I am not sure if the book “Bringing down the House” wasn’t sponsored by the casinos because it showed them stupid in contrast to a group of MIT geniuses. Great attraction for new clients, lol.

But it would be interesting to find out how long Claudio stayed in Vegas. Maybe long enough to “start training” and lose all the money in the process?
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IIRC, one of the articles stated that he only stayed for a month before moving to Florida.
 
  • #2,129
  • #2,130
Charlot123 said:
Bureaucracy. Now Brown will spend a lot of money on external consultants, while all they needed to do was to listen in November-December to their own janitor.
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lawsuits. lawsuits. lawsuits.
 
  • #2,131
Charlot123 said:
But there is some obvious lack of common sense in the sutuation. A security guard said they were hired to watch the event but not the building. But the event is located in the building! If someone, God forbid, decides to blow up something in the building, or shoot outside the event hall but hit the outgoing participants, it does become the hired security's responsibility, immediately! If you are hired to "stay in the door and watch those walking in and out", then someone from the company has to check the part outside the hall and definitely have a connection with the campus police, just for such cases. Otherwise it looks (and seems to be the case) that the external security company provides talking mannequins. Sorry.
Click to expand...

oh my.
Can you imagine being the parents of the two students who were killed, and reading ALL THIS,

As well, the trauma to all in the classroom, and all the students at Brown, learning how lax security is at their school.
 
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  • #2,132
nhmemorymaker said:
oh my.
Can you imagine being the parents of the two students who were killed, and reading ALL THIS,

As well, the trauma to all in the classroom, and all the students at Brown, learning how lax security is at their school.
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Absolutely. The whole story is so sad. Makes one feel angry, too.

It was just before the exams, the parents were expecting their kids home soon.
 
  • #2,133
  • #2,134
  • #2,135
A very long (sorry), geeky post, drawn mostly from the golden years of Usenet, my generation's Reddit. I've left CV's typos and mistakes untouched and have added automated translations inline.

1996
Is Biology really a science?

Cláudio would have been 18 or so and in his first or second year of his undergrad degree in Lisbon. Reconstructed from snippets that are quoted in a response. The original post doesn't appear for me:
My question is: is Biology really a science?

This question arouse when i compared the methods used by Biology in contrast with those used by other natural sciences like Physics and even Chemistry. In my opinion, Biology is not a real science, in the sense that it doesn't abstract and generalize like Physics does. In fact, the almost unexistence or knowledge of mathematics in Biology is shocking. This leads in my opinion to a pile of unrelated and confusing data. After all, to me that's what Biology looks like. I do agree that recently there have been advances in what comes to establish some general laws in Biology, but that's not enough.

To me, Biology is a very important branch of Knowledge, but still striving to become a real science, for a science is only a science as long as it makes use of Maths.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
! Claudio Valente ! [email protected] !
! ! !
! ! Physical Engeneering Student !
! ! Technical Institute of Portugal !
! ! IST, Lisbon, Portugal !
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Click to expand...

At the link above, you see a stern response from an academic working at the School of Biological Sciences in Birmingham, in the UK.

1997
Dragon Ball Z e SIC
Interesting snapshot of mood/character in 1997.
Apenas quero aproveitar este espaco para exprimir o meu descontentamento
pela atitude da SIC no que respeita a exibicao do Dragon Ball Z.

Primeiro, exibem uma media de 9 episodios por semana, para depois, em pleno
auge da saga Majin Bu acabarem com o enredo.

Isto nao se faz.

Vejam se continuam com a POUCA BOA PROGRAMACAO que ainda tem.

[Trans: I just want to take advantage of this space to express my discontent with SIC's attitude regarding the exhibition of Dragon Ball Z. First, they show an average of 9 episodes per week, and then, at the height of the Majin Bu saga, they end the plot. This is not acceptable. See if you can continue with the LITTLE GOOD PROGRAMMING you still have.]
--
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente
Estudante de Engenharia Fisica Tecnologica no IST
[email protected]
[email protected]

"Talvez eu saiba porque e' o Homem o unico animal que ri:
Tao cruelmente sofre que foi compelido a inventar o riso."
F. Nietzsche
[Trans: "Perhaps I know why Man is the only animal that laughs: he suffers so cruelly that he was compelled to invent laughter."]
Click to expand...

Asking about chess. No surprise:
Beginer's information
Hi! I am a beginner in chess and I would apreciate some information about
web sites where I can improve my skills.

Thank you in advance

Claudio Manuel Neves Valente
[email protected]
Lisbon-Portugal
Click to expand...

1999
Debuging problem with delete
Starting on Perl while still studying in Lisbon:
I'm a newcomer to perl and I've been having many problems with debuging
my programs.
when using perl -d, the command line donesn't allow me to edit the line
with delete or the arrows.

What should I do to fix this?

Thank you in advance and please mail me back the answer.

Claudio Valente

[email protected]
Click to expand...

2000
DMS from ADF compression for the PC
CV used a Commodore Amiga. There are quite a few messages about the Amiga and whether it could run Mac software faster than a Mac, in emulation. This later one is about the PC:
Does anybody know of a good program to run on the pc (or with source
code) that compresses ADF files into dms files, just like an Amiga?
Xdms only de-crunches dms files into adf!

Please reply via email.

Thanks.

Cláudio Valente
Click to expand...
(The Usenet name associated with this post is 'Claudio Manuel Neves Valente'.)

Shortly after arriving in the US (?), a query about calling Portugal cheaply.
Telefonar dos EUA
alguem sabe qual e cartao mais barato para telefonar dos EUA para
portugal?
Existe algum servico gratuito pc2phone para territorio naciona?

Obrigado

[Trans: Does anyone know which is the cheapest card to call from the US to Portugal? Is there any free pc2phone service for national territory? Thank you]

Cláudio Valente
Click to expand...

2003
PAUSE ID request (PLANK; Cláudio Valente)
CV requests a PAUSE ID, allowing him to upload Perl modules:
fullname: Cláudio Valente
userid: PLANK
mail: CENSORED
homepage:
why:

I am planning to contribute pure perl modules.

My first planned contribution will probably be related with sending
html in emails with media included.
Click to expand...
Ties in with the work he was doing or would later do at SAPO, on messaging. The account was granted.

His name appears on the list of authors here:
who is who on the perl module list

But not on the current list of CPAN authors here under username 'PLANK', or here:
Client Challenge

2009
CV's Github account. Company listed as SAPO. Account created December 2009. (Interesting profile image – thought it might be a cryptogram but it isn't.)
cvalente - Overview

Intense activity by CV on the SAPO Broker project, ending in late 2012. You can see the commits here:
Commits · pushme/sapo-broker

2010
Many uploads of Perl modules, mostly successfully tested: image processing, html mail, audio processing, etc. Ran for a few years, with the last in 2010. After that, he modified his Perl Authors account to delete various details. Here's one example from 2010, picked from perhaps 100 or so:

PASS HTML-Mail-0.11 x86_64-linux-thread-multi-ld 2.6.26-2-amd64
Dear Claudio Valente,

This is a computer-generated report for HTML-Mail-0.11
on perl 5.12.1, created by CPAN-Reporter-1.18.

Thank you for uploading your work to CPAN. Congratulations!
All tests were successful.

Sections of this report:

* Tester comments
* Program output
* Prerequisites
* Environment and other context
Click to expand...
Another successfully tested upload here:
PASS CDB_Perl-0.55 i386-netbsd 5.0.2

2012
CV's OpenHub account edits, showing names changes. Like the GitHub account, it lists SAPO as his company.
cvalente : Account Edit History - Open Hub

As with the GitHub a/c, the only project it's associated with today is SAPO Broker, a messaging framework:
The SAPO Broker Open Source Project on Open Hub

2018
One of the 14 accounts following cvalente on GitHub is 'cvpt', which only follows cvalente. In 2018, cvpt raised an issue here:
use cover metadata in opus files · Issue #702 · PaulWoitaschek/Voice

It requests a functionality enhancement in some audio file-compression/decompression software.
Some opus files have cover metadata. I would like the player to be able to recognize it and use the appropriate thumbnail, just like it happens already for mp3 files.

Attached you can find a zip file with the appropriate files as example.

opus.zip

More information can be found by reading

opusenc --help-picture

Or the opusfile documentation

App-Version:3.6.1
Android Version: 6.0.1
Click to expand...

Can we be sure that cvpt is CV? No, but it's probable, if 'cv' is Cláudio Valente and 'pt' is Portugal, and given that cvpt follows only one account – cvalente – on GitHub. Also, it's to do with audio processing, which is something CV was definitely working on in Perl. The issue raised above is from 2018. If it's CV, it confirms that he was continuing to take an interest in this kind of work after moving to the US again in 2017, if that 2017 date is correct. (The sample image uploaded in the zip file to help with the fix is a stock image Finish photographer Tero Vesalainen, from 2015, which you can verify using TinEye's reverse image search. The image is used in many blogs unrelated to CV.) The bug report made by user cvpt was accepted and a fix implemented.

CV's GitHub account shows (and is still followed by) people who are active developers and with whom CV worked on the SAPO Broker project. I imagine journalists could contact them to see what they have to say, if they haven't already.

Sorry about the length of this!
 
  • #2,136
CNN interviewed CV's neighbors from the time he was a student at IST. According to former neighbors, CV lived in their apartment building and was reclusive. He cut his parents off and even changed the locks to the apartment, which he later sold without his parents' knowledge. They would come to visit him, but he wouldn't open the door. At times they would hide near the apartment, hoping to see him. On one occasion they came with firefighters and police, checking if something happened to him. He was not home and was very upset by the incident. His mother got the information from the neighbors about his well being. She stated that her son needed help but didn't want to get it.



I wonder what was his grudge against his parents?
 
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  • #2,137
indicolite22 said:
CNN interviewed CV's neighbors from the time he was a student at IST. According to former neighbors, CV lived in their apartment building and was reclusive. He cut his parents off and even changed the locks to the apartment, which he later sold without his parents' knowledge. They would come to visit him, but he wouldn't open the door. At times they would hide near the apartment, hoping to see him. On one occasion they even came with firefighters and police, checking if something happened to him. He was not home and was very upset by the incident. His mother got the information from the neighbors about his well being. She stated that her son needed help but didn't want to get it.

Click to expand...
Something went badly wrong between CV and his parents early on – some kind of grudge. Grudges were big in his life. Something about CV's personality reminds me of Hans Reiser's. Reiser didn't kill himself but killed the his former wife, the mother of their children.

Hans Reiser - Wikipedia

Had he wanted to study abroad rather than in Lisbon? Did he feel like he was being held back, even then? The grudges started early in life.
 
  • #2,138
The neighbors said that CV's parents were very caring. One of the neighbors still keeps in touch with his mother. From the outside it seems that his parents tried to do best for him and enabled him to develop his talent, but he had zero gratitude. He seems very entitled.
 
  • #2,139
indicolite22 said:
The neighbors said that CV's parents were very caring. One of the neighbors still keeps in touch with his mother. From the outside it seems that his parents tried to do best for him and enabled him to develop his talent, but he had zero gratitude. He seems very entitled.
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I can imagine his having wanted a different outcome – being blocked by his parents for what they thought was his own good (and probably was). Perhaps he wanted to take a different route completely - study elsewhere, for example – and was stopped. His parents may not even know what they did that made him so bitter. Ultra-smart kids are sometimes very clear about what they want and take it badly when people they see as less smart make decisions that affect their lives.
 
  • #2,140
indicolite22 said:
CNN interviewed CV's neighbors from the time he was a student at IST. According to former neighbors, CV lived in their apartment building and was reclusive. He cut his parents off and even changed the locks to the apartment, which he later sold without his parents' knowledge. They would come to visit him, but he wouldn't open the door. At times they would hide near the apartment, hoping to see him. On one occasion they came with firefighters and police, checking if something happened to him. He was not home and was very upset by the incident. His mother got the information from the neighbors about his well being. She stated that her son needed help but didn't want to get it.



I wonder what was his grudge against his parents?
Click to expand...

Sounds like it was paranoia at best.
 
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