By PATRICK WHITTLE and LEAH WILLINGHAM Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Police released new video of a potential suspect and renewed their search Monday for the shooter who killed two Brown University students and wounded nine others, a day after they released a person of interest in the case.
Here’s a look at what to know about the shootings and the search:
New video emerges after person of interest released
Authorities announced the detained man’s release during a news conference late Sunday. That marked a setback in the investigation of Saturday’s attack on the Ivy League school’s campus and added to questions about the shooting and investigation.
Police had detained the man at a Rhode Island hotel. State Attorney General Peter Neronha acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, saying, “We have a murderer out there.”
On Monday, Providence police released a second video showing someone dressed in black walking along a city street minutes after the shooting. The video — like an earlier one released the day of the shooting — did not show the suspect’s face.
During a news conference Monday afternoon, authorities screened video that showed a masked suspect wearing a dark two-tone jacket about two hours before the attack. They said they’d post the video on social media and implored the public to call their tip line with any information that might lead them to the suspect.
A busy time on campus
The shooting occurred as students were taking final exams.
The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the engineering building, getting off more than 40 rounds from a 9 mm handgun, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Two handguns were recovered when the person of interest was taken into custody and authorities also found two loaded 30-round magazines, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity.
The students who died were MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old freshman from Brandermill, Virginia, and Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore from a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Umurzokov was an aspiring neurosurgeon and Cook was a student leader of Brown University’s campus Republicans. They were in a study group preparing for an economics final.
One of the nine wounded students has been released from the hospital, university President Christina Paxson said Sunday. Seven others were in critical but stable condition, and one was in critical condition.
Durham Academy, a private K-12 school in Durham, North Carolina, confirmed that a recent graduate, Kendall Turner, was critically wounded and that her parents were with her.
Investigators were not immediately sure how the shooter got inside the classroom, which is on the first floor of a seven-story complex that houses the engineering school and physics department.
The attack set off hours of chaos on campus and in the surrounding neighborhoods, as hundreds of officers searched for the shooter. One video showed students in a library shaking and wincing as they heard loud bangs just before police entered the room to clear the building.
New efforts to find the shooter
Authorities asked neighborhood residents and businesses for video surveillance that might help identify the attacker. They said Sunday that one reason they lacked video of the shooter was because Brown’s engineering building doesn’t have many cameras.
Law enforcement on Monday appeared to still be performing the most basic of investigative tasks: tracing the suspect’s movements in the minutes after the attack and searching for physical evidence near the crime scene.
Mayor Brett Smiley said there have been no credible threats of further violence since the shooting, and the city’s schools were open Monday.
Brown student survives a second school shooting
Brown University junior Mia Tretta was 15 years old when she was shot in the abdomen during a mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Two students were killed, and she and two others were wounded.
On Saturday, Tretta was studying in her dorm with a friend when the first message arrived warning of an emergency at the university’s engineering building. As more alerts poured in urging people to remain locked down and stay away from windows, the familiarity of the language made clear what she had feared.
“No one should ever have to go through one shooting, let alone two,” Tretta told the AP by phone Sunday.
A community grieves
On Sunday evening, city leaders, residents and others gathered at a park to honor the victims. The event originally was scheduled as a Christmas tree and Hanukkah menorah lighting.
Brown, the seventh-oldest higher education institution in the U.S., is one of the nation’s most prestigious colleges, with roughly 7,300 undergraduates and more than 3,000 graduate students. The school canceled all remaining classes and exams for the semester.
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Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Contributing were Associated Press reporters Kimberlee Kruesi, Amanda Swinhart, Robert F. Bukaty and Jennifer McDermott in Providence; Michael Casey in Boston; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Kathy McCormack and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington.