In the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting at Brown University, a custodian at the college says he saw the depraved gunman more than a dozen times before the bloodshed, and no action was taken by the school despite reporting his suspicions to security.
Derek Lisi, who has worked at the Ivy League school for 15 years, told the Boston Globe he “knew something was off with” the perpetrator before Claudio Neves Valente opened fire Dec. 13, killing two students and wounding nine others.
Lisi remembers seeing the gunman at about 6:20 p.m. the day before Thanksgiving and then just after 8 p.m. Dec. 1, WPRI-TV reported.
“Something kept telling me, ‘Don’t ignore it. Don’t ignore it,’” he said.
“We interact with the students all the time,” Lisi said. “This hits close to home because it’s our workplace. We spend more time there than we do at home because of the shift that we work.”
BREAKING: A custodian at Brown University spotted the shooter peering into windows and classrooms over a DOZEN TIMES
He informed the university, and they did NOTHING. Brown Officials need to be SACKED
DEI is literally getting innocent people KlLLED. pic.twitter.com/D73bzulV7Q
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 22, 2025
The TV station reported:
Lisi said he reported the individual as suspicious to a third-party security vendor for Brown called Event Staff Services LLC, or ESS, on three separate occasions.
When he warned them Dec. 1, a staff member of that security company told him they were only present to cover an event. Lisi said the university’s Department of Public Safety might have been notified, and he doesn’t know if any other action happened.
ESS did not respond to multiple requests for comment. David Madonna, the company president, told the Boston Globe that investigating reports of suspicious people is not its job.
“We have nothing to do with watching buildings,” Madonna told the Globe. “Whenever there’s an event at Brown, they hire us to do ID check and capacity counts in their rooms.”
Once photos were released of the person of interest, Lisi immediately called the tip line, and he was interviewed by police on Monday, Dec. 15.
“I told detectives, it was like I could see him and nobody else could – it is an eerie feeling,” Lisi explained. “It was the way he was browsing in the classrooms. He was like rolling his eyes one way, rolling his eyes another way. And it wasn’t just that classroom, it was all the classrooms.”
Lisi says many “what ifs” are still swirling in his head.
“Yes, the shooter is responsible,” he said. “But security should have been better, without a doubt.”
A Brown University custodian says he saw the alleged mass shooter nearly a dozen times several weeks before the attack and shared suspicions about the man with an on-campus security guard. https://t.co/khAut5jQIi
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) December 22, 2025
He noted the doors of the building where the shooting took place are usually locked on weekends, but they were unlocked on the fateful Saturday.
“That the building should have been open access,” he said. “That’s what is still weird to me. It doesn’t make sense to me why on a Saturday it was an open access.”
Lisi speculated if more security cameras had been present in the building, police may have been able to identify Neves Valente sooner, and perhaps stopping the subsequent murder of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was slain in Brookline, Massachusetts two days after the horror in Providence, Rhode Island.
“Two students aren’t here today – that kills me every day,” Lisi said. “I can’t get his face out of my head.”
There is harsh reaction online to Lisi’s revelations.
Journalist Nick Sortor said: “He informed the university, and they did NOTHING. Brown Officials need to be SACKED. DEI is literally getting innocent people KlLLED.”
Former police officer Brandon Tatum added: “A Brown University custodian repeatedly reported seeing the shooter peering into classrooms over a dozen times – and the school did nothing. Total institutional failure. Brown’s leadership should be fired immediately. This kind of DEI-driven incompetence is costing innocent lives.”
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