A homeless hero has been credited with cracking the shootings at Brown University and MIT wide open after he confronted the gunman — as the feds say he is now “entitled” to the staggering $50,000 reward.
The tipster, known only as John, was key to police eventually identifying Claudio Neves Valente as the suspect after he offered up key information on the 48-year-old perp’s car following an odd encounter with him on the day of the shooting, officials said.
“He blew this case right open,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said as he praised the tipster.
Until John’s tip came through, investigators had been scrambling to ID the gunman who killed two Brown students and then gunned down a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor just two days later.
It wasn’t immediately clear if John — whose image was initially put out by police as someone they wanted to speak to — would receive the hefty reward on offer, but Ted Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI, said he should be eligible.
“It would be logical to think that, absolutely, that individual would be entitled to that,” Docks said when asked about the possibility.
John’s tip first came to light when he started posting on Reddit that he recognized the images of the perp that had been blasted out by authorities in the wake of Saturday’s bloodshed.
“I’m being dead serious,” the Reddit post said, according to court documents.
“The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental.”
“I know because he used his key fob to open the car, approached it, and then something prompted him to back away,” he added.
Providence Police
“When he backed away, he relocked the car. I found that odd, so when he circled the block, I approached the car that is when I saw the Florida plates.”
Until that point, authorities had zero details on a vehicle possibly tied to the shooter.
After John’s image was put out by police as the hunt continued, he sat down with investigators and divulged that he’d had a strange “cat and mouse” interaction with the gunman the day of the shooting.
He said he encountered Neves Valente in the bathroom of Brown’s engineering building just hours before the attack — and noted the suspect’s clothing was “inappropriate and inadequate for the weather.”
Sources told Fox News that John had been living in the basement of the engineering building at the time.
He later bumped into Neves Valente outside the building and opted to follow him, according to his affidavit.
At one point, John says he yelled out, “Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?”
“The Suspect responded, ‘I don’t know you from nobody,’ then Suspect repeatedly asked, ’Why are you harassing me?’” court files state.
Working off John’s information, authorities tapped into additional surveillance footage that ultimately led them to the gunman.
Nearly 24 hours later, investigators found Neves Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.
“When you crack it, you crack it,” the attorney general said.
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