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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Police renewed their search Monday for the gunman who killed two Brown University students and wounded nine others, a day after they released a person of interest after determining the evidence pointed “in a different direction.”
Authorities announced the man’s release at news conference late Sunday, marking a setback in the investigation into Saturday’s attack on the Ivy League school’s campus.
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It unraveled progress authorities thought they had made at the start of the day when they announced they had detained him at a Rhode Island hotel in connection with the attack and lifted a campus lockdown.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said he understands that the community is anxious, but that there have been no credible threats of further violence since the shooting.
No current suspect in deadly shooting
The release of the person of interest left law enforcement without any known suspect, with officials pledging to redouble their efforts by canvassing for video surveillance that could help pinpoint the killer’s identity.
“We have a murderer out there,” said Attorney General Peter Neronha.
On Sunday morning, officials took into custody a person of interest at a Hampton Inn in Coventry, Rhode Island, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Providence. Two people familiar with the matter identified that individual as a 24-year-old man from Wisconsin, though authorities never released his name.
“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.
He said there was some evidence that pointed to the man authorities detained, but “that evidence needed to be corroborated and confirmed. And over the last 24 hours leading into just very, very recently, that evidence now points in a different direction.”
Authorities believe they are looking for a person shown in a small, short clip of video footage walking away, the mayor said. The person’s back is to the camera.
“Right now, we don’t have any evidence to suggest that it was more than that individual,” Smiley said Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Despite an enhanced police presence at Brown, officials are not recommending another shelter-in-place order like the one that followed the Saturday afternoon shooting, when hundreds of officers searched for the attacker and urged students and staff to remain indoors.
Shooting happened at a busy time on campus
The shooting occurred as final exams were underway.
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 AP. 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.
Investigators were not immediately sure how the shooter got inside the first-floor classroom in a seven-story complex that houses the School of Engineering 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.
During the lockdown, which wasn’t lifted until Sunday, after the person of interest was taken into custody, many students remained barricaded in rooms while others hid behind furniture and bookshelves as police searched for the shooter.
One of the nine wounded students has been released from the hospital, Paxson said Sunday. Seven others were in critical but stable condition, and one was in critical condition.
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.
Smiley said he visited some wounded students and was inspired by their courage, hope and gratitude. “The resilience that these survivors showed and shared with me, is frankly pretty overwhelming,” he said.
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.
