Why was a 'person of interest' released in Brown shooting? What we know
- - Why was a 'person of interest' released in Brown shooting? What we know
Christopher Cann and N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAYDecember 15, 2025 at 3:38 PM
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Within hours of a gunman opening fire inside a classroom at Brown University, the FBI and local police announced they had detained a person of interest in the shooting, which left two students dead and nine others injured.
But officials convened a late-night news conference later that day and made a surprise announcement: The detained man was being released because evidence “now points in a different direction.”
“We have a murderer out there, frankly,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told reporters.
Live updates: Search for Brown University gunman resumes, victims ID'd
1 / 21Vigil honors Brown University shooting victimsSeveral hundred people gathered in Providence’s Lippitt Park Sunday, Dec. 14, to honor victims of the mass shooting at Brown University a day earlier that claimed two lives.
A person being detained and released is not uncommon in large police investigations, said Scott Duffey, co-director for the Criminal Justice Institute at Wilmington University in Delaware.
“It happens more times than not,” said Duffey, a retired FBI agent who spent a decade focused on fugitive apprehensions.
But the way officials announced the detention led people to believe investigators had more than they did, he and other experts said, and sparked confusion and backlash when the person was released and the manhunt continued.
an active shooter on Brown University’s campus in Providence, Rhode Island on Dec. 13, 2025
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Police responded to reports of an active shooter on Brown University’s campus in Providence, Rhode Island on Dec. 13, 2025
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An alert on Dec. 13 said to run from the Barus and Holley Building at 184 Hope Street near the university. Here is the building in an undated photograph.
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An alert on Dec. 13 said to run from the Barus and Holley Building at 184 Hope Street near the university. Here is the building in an undated photograph.
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1 / 5Shots fired at Brown University: Photos show the scene
Police responded to reports of an active shooter on Brown University’s campus in Providence, Rhode Island on Dec. 13, 2025
The back and forth drew parallels to the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, when the FBI announced a “subject of interest” had been detained, only to release the person hours later.
Speaking about the mass shooting in an appearance on CNN, Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., noted the Kirk investigation and accused FBI Director Kash Patel and others of being “very eager to break news before they’re confident whether it’s true or not."
The FBI ‘gleefully’ reported a person had been detained
Police said that on the morning of Dec. 14, around 3:45 a.m., federal agents and local law enforcement arrived at a hotel in Covington, Rhode Island, about 20 miles from the Brown campus, and detained a man. Within a few hours, Brown University lifted its campus-wide shelter in place order.
Patel then posted a photo on X showing agents as well as Providence and Covington police standing inside the hotel where the person of interest was detained. Patel touted the FBI's role in the detention, writing that the man was identified after the Providence Police Department relayed a tip to the bureau.
An update on the @FBI response at Brown University:@FBIBoston established a command post to intake, develop and analyze leads, and run them to ground. We activated the FBI’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team, to provide critical geolocation capabilities. As a result, early… pic.twitter.com/KONDEbrduR
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) December 14, 2025
While authorities did not publicly identify the man, multiple news outlets citing law enforcement sources published the name of a Wisconsin native who formerly served in the U.S. Army. USA TODAY is no longer naming the person as they were neither named a suspect in the shooting nor charged.
A large police presence was visible at a home associated with the man in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported.
At a news conference announcing the man’s detention, FBI agent Ted Docks thanked law enforcement for their quick work.
“We could not do that without working seamlessly with our partners,” he said, adding, “We were on the horn definitely gleefully when we got a person of interest.”
‘Not a mistake’
The tone was dramatically different hours later, when, around midnight, officials hosted a surprise news conference and announced the man would no longer be held by police, and the investigation would take a different direction.
“Shortly, we will be releasing the person of interest who had been detained earlier today,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said. “We know that this is likely to cause fresh anxiety for our community.”
Law enforcement officials declined to provide details about why they arrested the man in the first place. Neronha said while they had a “quantum of evidence that justified” the initial detention, it wasn’t enough to charge the man in connection with the deadly shooting.
From left, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and Rhode Island Governor Daniel McKee at a presser about the mass shooting at Brown University on Sunday, Dec. 14 2025.
"I've been around long enough to know that sometimes you head in one direction, and then you have to regroup and go in another, and that's exactly what has happened over the last 24 hours or so," Neronha said.
Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar L. Perez Jr. echoed those comments, telling reporters “It’s not a mistake. It’s just how investigations work.”
Law enforcement experts who spoke with USA TODAY also agreed that detaining suspects and clearing them is a natural occurrence during a police probe.
“People are detained, people are questioned and ultimately we often see that they’re released,” Duffey said. “It gets a lot more attention in a big case like we’re seeing now.”
Concerns mount over handling of investigative information
What is uncommon, Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Aloke Chakravarty told USA TODAY is “leading the media to believe that you have stopped the public safety concern and that there is no more risk or threat to the community.”
“There does seem to be an unnecessary and sometimes dangerous urgency to disseminate information, even if it's not fully vetted,” Chakravarty said.
Sometimes police have information about whether an attack was targeted, which could lead them to believe there’s less of an ongoing risk to the public, Chakravarty said.
“That being said, once somebody is a wanted man or woman then they can become desperate,” he added. “And if they've already taken lives, it becomes more expedient for them to attack again.”
Chakravarty pointed to the case of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, which he helped prosecute, as an example. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shot and killed an MIT police officer while on the run in the wake of the attack.
What happens now?
Police in Providence said they continued their search for a suspect on Monday, Dec. 15, combing through physical evidence, interviewing witnesses and searching for clear video of the gunman.
At the Sunday night news conference, Smiley asked for the public’s help in identifying the shooter, requesting that businesses and residents check their surveillance cameras.
So far, police have released several videos, which show the suspect walking near campus, but not in the engineering building where the shooting took place.
“There just weren’t a lot of cameras in that Brown building,” Neronha said, describing it as “old.”
Duffey said investigators were likely focused on locating evidence that could identify the suspect, like a fingerprint or a recent threat against the school.
He added that investigators were working against the clock. As the hours and days pass, witness accounts grow less reliable, and the suspect has more time to flee or hide.
Law enforcement’s first objective will be to find a name, he said.
“Without knowing who you’re looking for,” Duffey said, “it remains a whodunit.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why was a 'person of interest' in Brown shooting freed? What we know
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