Who is the ‘person of interest’ in Brown University shooting in Rhode Island?

Who is the person of interest? 

Providence Police chief Oscar Perez said earlier on Sunday that a man in his 20s had been taken into custody in connection with the shooting. The officials did not mention the name of the person taken into custody in the incident. However, reports from the Washington Post and NBC News cited unnamed sources naming the detained man as Benjamin W Erickson. As per reports, he worked as a US Army infantryman from May 2021 to November 2024 and left the service with the rank of specialist.

How was he tracked and detained?

FBI director Kash Patel said that the person of interest was detained in a hotel room in Coventry, Rhode Island, about a 30-minute drive from the University campus.

According to Patel, an FBI team specialising in cellular data analysis used mobile phone geolocation data to track the suspect’s movements.

Why will he be released? 

At a late-night news conference on Sunday, Providence Mayor Butt Smiley and other state and local officials said the man would be released because the investigation was now going in a ‘different direction’.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said authorities had not yet solved the case but were confident of doing so soon.

“There was a quantum of evidence which justified detaining this person as a person of interest,” Neronha said. However, officials declined to explain what that evidence was.

Authorities said they now believe an unidentified person seen in surveillance footage released earlier may be the individual they are still searching for.

The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the seven-storey engineering and physics building before fleeing the scene. Outer doors had been left unlocked because exams were taking place.

Two students were killed. Seven injured people were in stable condition, one remained critical but stable, and another had been discharged, officials said.

Brown University cancelled exams and classes for the rest of the year.