Brown University Retains Former US Attorney Zachary Cunha

PROVIDENCE, RI — Brown University has retained former U.S. Attorney Zachary Cunha to assist in the aftermath of the Dec. 13 mass shooting.

"Brown works routinely with outside counsel whose expertise complements that of the University's Office of the General Counsel," Brian E. Clark, Brown's vice president for news and strategic campus communications, said in an email.

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"In this case, we retained Zachary Cunha, the former United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island, to assist the University in coordinating with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies," Clark said.

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A partner at Nixon Peabody, a Boston-based international law firm, Cunha was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island from 2021 to 2025.

A gunman fired at least 44 shots in the Barus & Holley engineering and physics building, killing two and wounding eight others the afternoon of Dec. 13. The Providence police and the FBI identified the shooter as Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old former Brown student and Portuguese national living in Miami.

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Neves Valente was also linked to the shooting death of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno Loureiro, who was found mortally wounded in his Brookline home Dec. 15, with the feds calling the connection a certainty.

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Five days after the Brown University mass shooting, Neves Valente was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a Salem, New Hampshire, storage unit.

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