BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — Police intensified their search Wednesday for a suspect within the fatal shooting of a professor on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was shot at his house earlier within the week.
Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was shot Monday night at his apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died at a native hospital on Tuesday, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office mentioned in a assertion.
The prosecutor’s workplace mentioned the murder investigation was ongoing and no suspects had been in custody as of Wednesday morning.
The investigation into the MIT professor’s killing comes as Brown University, one other prestigious establishment simply 50 miles (80 kilometers) away in Providence, Rhode Island, is still reeling from an unsolved shooting that killed two college students and wounded 9 others Saturday. Investigators supplied no indication Tuesday that they had been any nearer to zeroing in on the gunman’s identification.
READ MORE: What we know so far about the Brown University shooting suspect
The FBI on Tuesday mentioned it knew of no connection between the crimes.
Loureiro, who joined MIT in 2016, was named final yr to guide MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the place he aimed to advance clear power know-how and different analysis. The heart, one of many faculty’s largest labs, had greater than 250 folks working throughout seven buildings when he took the helm.
Loureiro, who was married, grew up in Viseu in central Portugal and studied in Lisbon earlier than incomes a doctorate in London, based on MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon earlier than becoming a member of MIT, it mentioned.
“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who beforehand led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, informed a campus publication.
The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, mentioned in a assertion that the killing was a “shocking loss.” The workplace of Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa additionally put out a condolence assertion calling Loureiro’s demise “an irreparable loss for science and for all those with whom he worked and lived.”
A 22-year-old scholar at Boston University who lives close to Loureiro’s house in Brookline informed The Boston Globe she heard three loud noises Monday night and feared it was gunfire. “I had never heard anything so loud, so I assumed they were gunshots,” Liv Schachner was quoted as saying. “It’s difficult to grasp. It just seems like it keeps happening.”
Some of Loureiro’s college students visited his house, an house in a three-story brick constructing, Tuesday afternoon to pay their respects, the Globe reported.
Loureiro had mentioned he hoped his work would form the long run.
“It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” Loureiro mentioned when he was named to guide the plasma science lab final yr. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”