“It was another Portuguese who committed the crime”: Portuguese community in Massachusetts shocked by Nuno Loureiro’s death

The United States became one of the main destinations for Portuguese emigration at the beginning of the 20th century and, later, in the 70s, cwith a strong connection to the Azores. From 1958 onwards, with the eruption of the Capelinhos volcano, in Faial, thousands of Azoreans were welcomed to America,especially in areas such as the state of Massachusetts.

The Portuguese community is now in shock with the murder of Portuguese physicist Nuno Loureiro and with the shooting attack that left two dead, at Brown University, in Providence, in the state of Rhode Island, which were allegedly perpetrated by another Portuguese, Cláudio Valente.

There are still no answers to a tragedy that for the Portuguese community will never make sense. In the Massachusetts region alone, it is estimated that more than 300 thousand Portuguese and Portuguese descendants currently live.

Investigators believe that Valente is responsible for the attack at Brown University and the murder of Portuguese Nuno Loureiro, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who was shot to death in his home in Brookline on Monday, according to Massachusetts Federal Prosecutor Leah B. Foley.

Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley added. Nuno Loureiro, who grew up in Viseu, graduated and did research at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), in Lisbon.

Nuno Loureiro joined MIT in 2016 and was appointed last year to lead the Center for Plasma and Fusion Science, where he worked to advance clean energy technologies and other research. The center, one of MIT’s largest laboratories, had more than 250 people working in seven buildings when the Portuguese took over as director.