‘Thank you for the opportunity’: Brown University shooter mentions Trump in chilling video confession

Brown University shooter, who also killed an MIT professor, confessed to the crimes in a video he made after the attack, but gave no motive behind his actions, authorities said on Tuesday (Jan 7). Claudio Neves Valente opened fire in a classroom at the US Ivy League school during a final exam study session, killing two and injuring nine people, on December 13. Two days after the mass shooting, he killed a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with whom he had previously studied.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said that while searching the storage unit, where Valente was found dead on December 18 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the investigators found a video of him admitting to the crimes. In the videos, Valente says that he had been planning the attack for six semesters.

Valente said that he “had plenty of opportunities” for the shooting but “always chickened out.” According to transcripts of videos released by the DOJ, he did not reveal the motive of shooting. Although he said that “the only objective was to [pause] leave more or less on my own terms... and it’s already long overdue... I wouldn’t be the one who ended up suffering the most from all of this. No, that cannot happen. So, if you don’t like it, tough luck.”

Valente also said that he did not regret the shooting. “I also don’t regret what I did. Honestly, my only regret is this thing in the eye [laughs],” he said, referring to the injury he received to his eye during the shooting. He said that he injured his eye during the shooting after a bullet shell bounced back.

“I also have no interest in being famous. I don’t give a damn about how you judge me or what you think of me,” he said.

Valente also mentioned US President Donald Trump in his video. “I particularly like Trump’s shit, to have–have called me an animal, which is true. I am an animal and he is also, but uhm, I have no love–I have no hatred towards America, I also have no hatred at all,” he said. “This was an issue of... of opportunity. I would really like to thank you for the only opportunity that you gave me here, which was this one, and... and look, that’s it. I don’t have anything else to say. We are finished.”

During the manhunt for the shooter after the mass shooting, Trump had told reporters, “Hopefully, they’re going to catch this animal.”

Ending the video, Valente said, “Let’s see if I’ve got the balls to do this to myself now, because it was hard as hell to do it to all of these people, man. It was hard as hell... I envy those who have no difficulty doing it, and these people exist... Let’s see if I have the courage.”

The DOJ said that the investigation into the “horrific acts” is still ongoing.