UPDATE: Brown University Shooting: Person of Interest Identified by Authorities, Now Released
Surveillance video released by police shows the suspect, dressed in black, calmly walking away from the scene, according to authorities cited in early reports.
Authorities say they have identified a person of interest taken into custody following Saturday night’s mass shooting at Brown University, an attack that left two people dead and nine others wounded and triggered an overnight manhunt across Providence.
NBC News correspondent Tom Winter reported early Sunday that senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation identified the man in custody as Benjamin Erickson, born August 10, 2001.
NBC News: Three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation say the man police have in custody in connection with the Brown University active shooter incident has been identified as:
Benjamin Erickson
DOB: 8/10/01Reported w/ @jonathan4ny
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) December 14, 2025
Winter cited three senior law enforcement officials and reported that investigators are continuing to examine Erickson’s background, including whether he had any prior connection to Brown University.
MORE: Law enforcement officials say they are looking into what might be an extensive mental health history for Erickson.
They say they are also looking into a possible connection to Brown University.
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) December 14, 2025
According to The Washington Post, Erickson is a 24-year-old originally from Wisconsin who was taken into custody at a hotel approximately 15 miles from campus. Authorities have emphasized that he has not been formally charged and is being described only as a “person of interest.”
The Post further reported that investigators recovered two firearms from Erickson at the time he was detained, including one fitted with a laser sight attachment.
Saturday’s shooting unfolded inside Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering building during final exam preparations. As Legal Insurrection previously reported, witnesses described chaos inside the building as gunfire erupted and students fled.
Surveillance video released by police shows the suspect, dressed in black, calmly walking away from the scene, according to authorities cited in early reports.
The shooting prompted a massive law enforcement response involving local, state, and federal agencies. The FBI arrived on scene quickly, and campus officials issued shelter-in-place orders as police searched surrounding neighborhoods.
Authorities later confirmed that no additional suspects are currently being sought. The investigation remains active as officials continue reviewing surveillance footage, forensic evidence, and witness statements.
This remains a developing story.
UPDATE: 11:35 PM EST:
NBC is reporting that the “person of interest” is set to be released.
The person of interest detained earlier today in connection with the deadly shooting will be released shortly, Providence’s mayor said at a news conference late tonight.
Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee said officials contacted FBI Director Kash Patel ahead of tonight’s announcement.
Mayor Brett Smiley said, “The status of safety in our community remains unchanged, and we believe that you remain safe in our community.”
Police initially said they were confident the person of interest was the person who opened fire in a first-floor classroom at Brown’s Barus & Holley building yesterday before fleeing.
Here is a portion of the late-night press conference Sunday in Providence, RI after the Brown University shooting person of interest was being released and no longer seen as a suspect.
Things are NOT going well for local and state officials pic.twitter.com/koXC5spkro
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 15, 2025
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Comments
Quick work.
However they still don’t know whose bag of cocaine was left in the white house, Go figure.
Pssst…. or they aren’t telling….
I wrote too soon.
Nevermind.
Party affiliation listed as “statehood” and has an apartment in DC.
I would guess it means this:
https://www.dcdemocraticparty.org/statehood
Grok: The only political party in the United States with “statehood” in its name is the D.C. Statehood Green Party (formerly the D.C. Statehood Party), which operates in the District of Columbia. This party focuses heavily on advocating for D.C. to become the 51st state, and it is a ballot-qualified party there, affiliated with the national Green Party.
Those prog grunts are delusional if they thing DC will become a state.
All it’ll take is a Dem-controlled congress and president, with a filibuster-proof majority in the senate. The Dems could have done it in 2009.
Not sure about that. It may require amending the Constitution as well.
Unless the Democrats plan to play their usual “redefine common words to mean things other than what they mean” trick, it would definitely require a constitutional amendment, The constitution is quite clear about the political structure of the District.
Nope. The constitution doesn’t require a federal district. It merely allows Congress “to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states and the acceptance of congress, become the seat of government of the united states.” If Congress chooses not to have such a district, that’s its decision.
Even the 23rd amendment, which refers to “The district constituting the seat of government of the United States”, assumes the district’s existence but doesn’t require it. If Congress decides we don’t need such a district then the 23A becomes obsolete, like the references to “Indians not taxed”, a category that Congress abolished in 1924.
Since DC was established by the Constitution, would it not require a constitutional amendment to create a state out of some or all DC territory?
As I understand it the constitution does explicitly state that a portion of DC MUST be federal land only and not under any state authority – so any “State of DC” would end up looking like a donut on the map with a big hole in the center.
The other explicit constitutional requirements are approval by a majority of said protocols-state’s residents, both houses of Congress, and the president.
There are also two historical requirements – that the population be “sufficient” and the economy a net positive to the federal govt’s income.
DC before you remove the donut center might qualify by the first criteria – the current pop is greater than (say) Wisconsin – but by any fair metric the second criteria fails muster. The driving force for the DC economy is subsidies and employment by the Feds – the remainder is almost entirely derivative of those first two categories. One estimate puts the Fed’s current ROI for DC to be a net loss of $25k per resident.
D’oh
I think it would have to be a peninsula, not a donut. Landlocking it entirely inside a state would be anathema to the clearly-stated intent of the Founders.
“would it not require a constitutional amendment to create a state out of some or all DC territory?”
As I recall, the county of Arlington VA was once part of the original District (check out its shape on a map). The fedguv decided it wasn’t necessary and ceded it back to VA. No amendment was proposed or ratified, so one apparently wasn’t needed.
DC was not established by the constitution. It was established by Congress, with Maryland’s and Virginia’s consent, and it can be abolished by Congress.
The constitution does not “state that a portion of DC must be federal land only and not under any state authority”. It allows for this but does not require it.
I assume “protocols-state’s” is a typo for “proposed state’s”, but no, there is no requirement for approval by a majority of a proposed state’s residents, or even any of them.
And no, if the Dems did decide to leave a core federal district it would not have to be on a state boundary. There is absolutely nothing in the constitution requiring or even implying such a thing. There’s no reason a federal district couldn’t be surrounded by a single state.
Please, people, why don’t you read the constitution before commenting on it?
“recovered two firearms from Erickson at the time he was detained, including one fitted with a laser sight attachment.”
Count Floyd: “Oooh… SCAAAARY, kids!”
Gun owners read this like, “He was found in possession of two knives, one with a bottle opener.”
My thought exactly. I have not only laser sight attachments, but actual laser sights. Not even the cats are afraid of them.
Push before now to ban laser and red dot sights on concealed carry. Got to give criminals a chance.
Except that if those were the weapons used in the shooting, it’s circumstantial evidence of his guilt.
If they knew that, they would have said it.
But they threw in the laser tidbit only because it was fully-semiautomatic-30-clip-magazines-weapon-of-war SCARY.
Yes, you’re probably right that that’s the reason they threw it in. Certainly there were so-called “experts” who went on and on about how sophisticated this piece of equipment is, and how only highly-trained professional assassins have any use for it, and other such hogwash that showed they know nothing at all about the subject they’re supposedly “expert” in.
He was inspired by Brown 1979 alumnus’s, Jon Land’s, best selling thriller, The Ninth Dominion, in which an intrepid mercenary visits Brown and has a massive gun battle.
Came back in time to kill Woke Hitler, who was a sophomore this year?
And they got the wrong guy. Great job RI
Well that’s embarrassing.
I can get a ticket from a camera anywhere in the city but those same cameras can’t find the shooter.
I guess the “person of interest” wasn’t that interesting.
Newsmax is reporting this. Why, if true, wasn’t local news saying the same that it was a Judaic program class?
That information means someone who shot up a Judaic program professor’s class remains at large in the New England region.
He just wasn’t that interesting.
So are the CNN idiots hyperventilating over red-dot lasers going to issue an update that they are not actually weapons of war?
They’re weapons of the same war in which AR-15s played a role.