The man held as a “person of interest” in the Brown University shooting that left two students dead and nine injured will be released from custody, authorities said on Sunday night.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said earlier at a midday news conference that a man in his 20s had been taken into custody in connection with Saturday’s gun violence but gave no further details.
But at a late-night news conference hours later, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and other state and local officials told reporters the man detained would be released from custody, saying the investigation was going into a “different direction”.
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“We have not yet solved this case, but I am confident we are going to do that in the near future,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said.
Officials declined to elaborate on why the man who was taken into custody was detained in the first place.
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“There was a quantum of evidence which justified detaining this person as a person of interest,” Neronha said, adding that investigators later determined there was “no basis to believe that he’s a person of interest, so … he’s being released”.