Police are investigating a potential connection between the mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island over the weekend and the murder on Monday of a physics professor in Brookline, Massachusetts, according to several news outlets. 

Law enforcement officials have identified a new person of interest in the Brown shooting and are examining a possible link to the Massachusetts killing. Investigators believe the vehicle this individual rented matches the make and model of a car connected to Monday’s attack in Brookline. 

Meanwhile, several outlets have reported that an arrest warrant has been issued for a suspect in the Brown attack. 

Nuno Gomes Loureiro, 47, a celebrated physicist who served as director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was shot inside his Massachusetts home on Monday and died from his wounds the following morning. He was born and raised in Portugal and started working at MIT in 2016. 

His murder came two days after a gunman opened fire in a Brown University classroom in Providence, Rhode Island during an exam review on Saturday, killing undergraduate students Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, and Ella Cook, 19. Nine other students were injured and six remain hospitalized as of Thursday evening. 

The development marks a shift in the Brown shooting investigation. The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Boston office, Ted Docks, said on Tuesday that there “seems to be no connection” between the two shootings.

Israeli officials, meanwhile, are said to be investigating whether Iran was behind the attack on Loureiro, whose research in energy and physics is of interest to the regime, the Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday. No suspects have been arrested, and no motive has been identified in the murder investigation.

The Brown shooting investigation has drawn scrutiny and ignited numerous conspiracy theories as authorities have failed to produce a suspect after six days. The speculation prompted Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island to reprimand those spreading “creepy, weird plot ideas” about the possible gunman and direct them to “please just knock it off.” 

“Speculation, particularly out on the internet, by people who have no idea what they are talking about, who have no clue about what is happening, is not helpful to the investigation,” Mr. Whitehouse said on Wednesday. “It gets people agitated and revved up and causes a lot of stupidity to cascade into tip lines that then law enforcement officials have to try to work through.

FBI director Kash Patel on Monday faced a deluge of criticism after he touted the bureau’s detainment of a 24-year-old man from Wisconsin who was later released. Providence officials stated there was only “a quantum of evidence which justified detaining this person as a person of interest.”

Mr. Patel has previously been accused of premature announcements during ongoing investigations. Following the murder of conservative figurehead Charlie Kirk, Mr. Patel faced backlash for announcing on X that a suspect was in custody when the shooter had not yet been apprehended.

The handling of the 24-year-old’s detainment and release prompted the former deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department, John Miller, to share his suspicion that there has been “friction” between the Providence police and the FBI over the ordeal. 

On Wednesday, Rhode Island’s attorney general, Peter Neronha, insisted that “There’s no discouragement among people who understand that not every case can be solved quickly.”