Investigators release additional video of possible Brown gunman as search continues

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Authorities have asked the public for any footage they might have of the gunman who fatally shot two students and wounded nine others at Brown University, even as they released a new video timeline and a slightly clearer image of a possible suspect.

Investigators provided no indication Tuesday that they were any closer to zeroing in on his identity. In all the videos made public, the suspect’s face was masked or turned away, and authorities have only been able to give a vague description of him as being stocky and about 5 feet, 8 inches (173 centimeters) tall.

Officers have been canvassing around Providence in search of clues that might help them figure out who was behind Saturday’s campus shooting.

Surveillance video the FBI posted online before it was removed showed a person in dark clothing walking along multiple sidewalks for about an hour starting shortly after 2 p.m. Saturday. The streets were all within a few blocks of the Brown University engineering building where the shooting occurred.

Some clips show the person walking in front of some properties several times. In one, the person abruptly turns around and runs in the other direction when someone approaches.

Two clips taken minutes after the shooting show the person walking away from a parking lot and then along a street.

Police have received about 200 tips, and Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, asked the public on Tuesday to look at their camera systems in the area to see if they have footage that might help officials identify the suspected gunman.

“We’re looking for a moment that is shorter than someone taking a breath,” Perez said.

A lack of cameras and clear video of the gunman has continued to frustrate both authorities and the community. While Brown President Christina Paxson confirmed Tuesday that the campus has 1,200 cameras, law enforcement says there is no clear video of the shooter from inside the engineering building.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha defended the investigation as going "really well" as he pleaded for public patience in locating the suspected killer.

Large questions remain, particularly about the shooter's motive. When pressed about a connection to ethnicity, political motive or culture, Neronha said, “That is a dangerous road to go down.”

Brown alumnus Chris Kremer joined about 200 others at a somber church service on campus for the victims Tuesday. He lives a block from the scene and often goes to the building where the shooting happened. Many in the community are thinking how easily they could have been among the shot, he said.

He said it was better to attend the service than to sit alone being sad, depressed and scrolling through his phone.

“It’s always nice to be in a big exalted space when you’re thinking kind of big heavy thoughts," Kremer said. “I guess people for thousands of years have found that to be something of a salve, so I’m hoping that a little bit of that works for me tonight.”

The attack and the shooter’s escape have raised questions about campus security, including a lack of cameras, and led to calls for better locks on campus doors.

Paxson said the university has two security systems. One system, activated at a time of emergency, sent out text messages, phone calls and emails that reached 20,000 people. The other system features three sirens across the campus and was not activated Saturday, a decision Paxson defended because doing so would have caused people to rush into buildings, including the one where the shooting was happening.

"So that is not a system we would ever use in the case of an active shooter," she said.

Brown's website says the sirens can be used when there is an active shooter, but Paxson said it “depends on the circumstances" and the location of the shooter.

Providence remained tense on Tuesday as additional police were sent to city schools to reassure worried parents that their kids would be safe. Ten state troopers were assigned to support police sent to beef up security at schools, district Superintendent Javier Montañez said.

Providence public schools canceled after-school activities and field trips for the week as a precaution.

Locals expressed fear as well as defiance as the investigation continued Tuesday.

“Of course it feels scary. But at the same time, I think that if the person really wanted to scare us, we shouldn’t allow him or her to win," said Tatjana Stojanovic, a Providence parent who lives next door to the Brown campus.

Others say the attention on security measures does little to address the real issue.

“The issue isn’t the doors, it’s the guns,” said Zoe Kass, a senior who fled the engineering building as police stormed in Saturday.

After spending of her life in schools where every door was locked and school shootings continued to persist, Kass said such security measures only created “the illusion of safety.”

Details have emerged about the victims, who were in the first-floor classroom in the school's engineering building studying for a final.

Two of the wounded students had been released as of Tuesday, Brown spokesperson Amanda McGregor said. Of the seven people that remained hospitalized, Mayor Brett Smiley said one remained in critical condition, five were in critical but stable condition and one was in stable condition.

One of the wounded students, 18-year-old freshman Spencer Yang of New York City, told The New York Times and the Brown Daily Herald that there was a mad scramble after the gunman entered the room. Yang said he wound up on the ground between some seats and was shot in the leg.

Jacob Spears, 18, a freshman from Evans, Georgia, was shot in the stomach, “but through sheer adrenaline and courage, he managed to run outside, where he was aided by others," according to a GoFundMe site organized for him.

Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore who was one of the two students killed, was vice president of the Brown College Republicans and was beloved in her church in Birmingham, Alabama.

The other student killed was MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old freshman from Brandermill, Virginia, who was majoring in biochemistry and neuroscience. His family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a kid.

Contributing were Associated Press journalists Jennifer McDermott, Matt O'Brien and Robert F. Bukaty in Providence; Brian Slodysko in Washington; Michael Casey in Boston; Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu.

Visitors kneel at a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims outside the Engineering Research Center at Brown University, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in Providence, R.I.(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Brown University students Gloria Kuzmenko-Latimir, left, and Haleema Aslam walk by Manning Hall on their way to a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The choir enters St. Stephen's Church during a community service for the victims of the Brown University shooting, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Participants light candles at St. Stephen's Church during a community service for the victims of the Brown University shooting, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

This image taken from video provided by the FBI shows a person of interest in the investigation of the shooting that occurred at Brown University, in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Christine Baranski was in the playground outside St. Matthew’s Church in Bedford, New York, about three years ago when she came across Matthew Guard, artistic director of the Grammy-nominated Skylark Vocal Ensemble.

“I love choral music,” she told him.

An Emmy- and Tony-Award winning actor, Baranski went on to attend some of his concerts.

“I was a fangirl basically,” she recalled. “And I think we just said, `Wouldn’t it be fun to do something together?’”

Baranski agreed to narrate a music-and-spoken word version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” last December at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, which owns the original manuscript of the 1843 classic. A recording was made last June at the Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and released Dec. 4 on the LSO Live label.

She will perform it again with the group on Thursday night at the Morgan, which is displaying the manuscript through Jan. 11, and again the following night at The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island, where she will again portray the acerbic Agnes van Rhijn when Season 4 of HBO’s “The Gilded Age” starts filming season four on Feb. 23.

“I have this thing about keeping language alive, keeping beautiful, well-written language,” she said. “Dickens, Stoppard, Shakespeare. We’re getting awfully lazy in our use of the English language.”

She compliments Julian Fellowes, creator of “The Gilded Age” and “Downton Abbey,” for distinguished prose.

“I think he’d play Agnes if he could,” she said. “He gives her the witty stuff.”

Baranski leaned on the skills that earned her an Emmy for “Cybill” and Tonys for “The Real Thing” and “Rumors.”

“You get to bring to life a lot of different characters, none the least of which is Ebenezer,” she said at the library this month. “It’s wonderful for an actor to differentiate in as subtle a way as possible these different characters. As an acting piece, it’s wonderful. And not many women have done it. It’s been done by Alistair Cooke and Patrick Stewart and Patrick Page and all these great actors — but I get to do it with a chorus.”

Guard weaves in underscoring by composer Benedict Sheehan with Baranski’s words and 10 carols that include “Silent Night” and “Deck the Halls” plus “Auld Lang Syne.”

Reciting the entire story would have created a Wagnerian-length evening.

“This manuscript itself is about 30,000 words and we needed about 5,000 to make it a concert length,” Guard said. “I tried to create space in the narrative for obvious musical exclamation points or emotional feelings, almost like arias in an opera.”

Sheehan had worked together with Guard on a 2020 recording “Once Upon a Time” that weaved together the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.”

“I said why don’t you commission me to write choral underscoring for the narrative that can kind of stitch together these different choral pieces?” Sheehan said.

Baranski got narration experience in 2023 when she replaced Liev Schreiber with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall for Beethoven’s “Egmont.”

“I could do this the rest of my career,” she thought at the time. “Just put me in a concert hall surrounded by great musicians.”

After working with dialect coach Howard Samuelsohn, Baranski practiced on Zoom to hone a 19th-century voice and avoid cliché.

“I said this is a good warm up for Aunt Agnes because it’s that kind of speech we were taught at Juilliard,” the 73-year-old Baranski said, recalling lessons from Edith Skinner decades ago.

“Sometimes it’s just a question of modulating your voice, just different rhythms and staccato or legato,” she said. “I want the voice of the Ghost of Christmas past to be disembodied… ethereal.”

She didn’t have an urge to join in on the carols.

“We take from each other,” she said. “When the chorus first heard my version of it, I think it subtly influenced the feeling of it and I take from the mood of the carol and bring it into my interpretation.”

“It’s a really exciting back-and-forth actually,” Guard said. “It’s not really totally clear who’s driving the bus at times.”

Baranski hopes the project has a future.

“We want to film this someday in the Morgan,” she said. “Make this a yearly event at the Morgan, because here’s the manuscript and people. It’s just one of those things like Handel’s `Messiah’ or `The Nutcracker.’”

She’s going to gift the CD to her grandchildren, four boys ranging from ages 2 to 12. Among her previous holiday experiences was portraying Martha May Whovier in the 2000 movie “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

“They’re curiously not interested in my even being Martha May in `The Grinch,’” Baranski explained. “Their friends sometimes say: `That’s your grandmother.’ But I just want to be their grandma — do you know what I mean — and not somebody?”

Skylark Artistic Director Matthew Guard and Christine Baranski are interviewed beside "A Christmas Carol In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas" by Charles Dickens, Dec. 1843," at The Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Skylark Artistic Director Matthew Guard and Christine Baranski are interviewed beside "A Christmas Carol In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas" by Charles Dickens, Dec. 1843," at The Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Skylark Artistic Director Matthew Guard and Christine Baranski are interviewed beside "A Christmas Carol In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas" by Charles Dickens, Dec. 1843," at The Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)