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On Saturday, December 13, 2025, a masked gunman opened fire inside Brown University’s Barus and Holley engineering building, killing two students and wounding nine others during finals week — a horror no parent should have to imagine on a campus supposedly devoted to learning and safety. The senseless attack has left Providence and the nation demanding answers as law enforcement pursues leads and the community mourns.
Investigators have released multiple outside surveillance clips and a timeline showing a person of interest moving through the streets around campus in the hours before the attack, and they’ve asked the public for help identifying others who were seen nearby. Police admit their best footage so far comes from neighborhood cameras and doorbells — not the building itself — which raises serious questions about how prepared campus security really was.
Brown officials and Rhode Island authorities say the school has roughly 1,200 cameras, but the shooting occurred in an older portion of the engineering complex that officials acknowledge had “fewer, if any” cameras — an explanation that rings hollow to parents and donors who rightly expect basic protections for students. This isn’t just an “old building” problem; it’s an institutional failure to prioritize ordinary safety over bureaucratic or ideological priorities.
Providence Police have said they’ve collected “physical evidence” and DNA, and they’re pursuing that trail — a welcome development that could finally move the case forward and bring a measure of justice to the families who lost children. While DNA evidence offers a real investigative lead, it doesn’t excuse the yawning holes in the basic, immediate work of interviewing witnesses and canvassing the classroom and surrounding neighborhood with speed and rigor.
Conservative commentators and local residents have blasted the official response as chaotic and sluggish, alleging that not all eyewitnesses have been interviewed and that crucial investigative steps were delayed during the vital first 48 to 72 hours. Whether the criticism is entirely fair or not, the optics are terrible: Americans expect police and universities to run toward danger and facts, not away from scrutiny.
Some in Providence’s media ecosystem have even floated the incendiary idea that political convenience — including sanctuary city posturing — might have influenced how and where surveillance cameras were deployed or maintained, a charge the university and city officials must answer decisively. Allegations like that are explosive for a reason: if true, they would show political ideology placed ahead of student safety; if false, they must be robustly and transparently debunked.
This tragedy also exposes a national problem: elite, cash-rich institutions lecturing the country on values while failing to meet the most basic duty to protect those in their care. President Trump and others have already pointed to the glaring contradictions here, and it’s time Brown’s trustees and administrators stop hiding behind platitudes and produce a full accounting of why surveillance, locks, and emergency protocols failed where lives were lost.
There is, however, a thread of hope: investigators continue to gather evidence, have released images of more people seen near the area, and are appealing to the public for tips — the kind of community cooperation that can break a case. Hardworking Americans demand results, not excuses; Brown and Providence owe the victims’ families transparency and a relentless, professional hunt for the shooter until justice is served and campus safety is truly restored.
