Rhode Island Brown University gunman still at large as police go door to door for CCTV

Police in Providence in Rhode Island are going door to door for home surveillance footage as the hunt continues for the shooter who killed two Brown University students and injured seven others on Saturday. Authorities have released fresh video and say a detained "person of interest" is now free.

The latest footage, released on Monday (15 December), shows a person in dark clothing walking away from the area at 4:06 p.m., about 15 minutes before Brown issued its first active shooter alert, police said. The individual’s face is not visible.

Earlier video released on Saturday showed a possible shooter dressed in black walking near the engineering and physics building where the attack took place, again without a clear view of the person’s face.

Authorities said the search resumed after they released a man in his 20s who had been detained over the weekend as a "person of interest". Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said investigators later determined there was "no basis to believe that he’s a person of interest, so... he’s being released." Officials did not provide additional details on what changed in the evidence.

Even as the manhunt expanded, officials said there were no credible threats to the wider community and they would not reimpose the shelter-in-place order that had been lifted for the campus and surrounding area. However, residents described a tense mood on Monday, with streets turning quiet as many people stayed indoors behind locked doors while police helicopters flew overhead. Some families left the area temporarily, neighbours said, and others sought to stay closer to friends or landlords for reassurance.

Police said the gunman fled after firing in a classroom inside Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering and physics building. Investigators said exterior doors had been left unlocked while exams were taking place. Students spent hours barricaded in classrooms or hiding under furniture as officers searched across the campus on Sunday.

The university, one of the Ivy League’s most prominent institutions with nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students, cancelled exams and classes for the rest of the year.

The two students killed were identified as Ella Cook, a sophomore from Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a Virginia student who was born in Uzbekistan. Cook was vice president of the school’s College Republicans, according to an X post from the New York Republicans Club, and her LinkedIn profile listed part-time work including an ice cream server role and a program assistant job in New York. U.S. Senator Katie Britt of Alabama said in a statement with her husband, Wesley, that they joined the Mountain Brook community and the state in mourning Cook’s death.

Umurzokov was an aspiring neurosurgeon and was described by his family as their "biggest role model" in a GoFundMe campaign set up after the shooting. The family wrote that he "always lent a helping hand to anyone in need without hesitation" and called him the most kind-hearted person they knew. He graduated from Midlothian High School in Virginia this spring as a top-10 student, according to video of the graduation ceremony. In a statement, U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan Jonathan Henick mourned "the loss of his bright future."

• Brown University: 'Person of interest' detained in shooting

Police said the investigation remains active, and officers continued seeking additional video from private cameras that may show the suspect’s movements before and after the shooting.

Copied