Four days after a shooting at Brown University killed two people and injured nine others, state and federal authorities were still seeking the gunman whose identity remains unknown.
“He could be anywhere,” Col. Oscar Perez, the chief of police in Providence, R.I., said at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.
He added that investigators had recovered DNA evidence from the scene and that they were also seeking a second man, who appears to have crossed paths with the possible gunman in the hours before the attack.
Chief Perez described the second man as someone who “may have relevant information to the investigation,” adding that officials wanted to speak with him.
The Providence Police and the F.B.I. have been releasing images and videos, including time-stamped footage and zoomed-in photographs, of a man who they suspect fired multiple rounds in a classroom where dozens of students were reviewing for an economics final last Saturday afternoon.
The images show a man walking, loitering and sometimes running along residential streets near campus, both before and shortly after the shooting. In some parts of the footage, the man is carrying a satchel.
The second man investigators are seeking also appears in the footage, and the suspect can be briefly seen running away from him. The interaction happened in a residential area near the Rhode Island Historical Society, which is about a five-minute walk from the building where the attack took place two hours later, time stamps on the footage suggest.
The time stamps also suggest that the video footage is not continuous, and the men are at times hidden by trees that make their interaction difficult to interpret.
None of the shared videos provided a clear view of the suspect’s face, so officials have told members of the public to search for clues in the man’s stature, movements and gait.
Chief Perez also told reporters that investigators have DNA evidence, which could eventually help investigators identify the shooter.
A law enforcement official familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak about the investigation, said that the DNA, as well as fingerprints, came from shell casings at the site of the shooting.
Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. office in Boston, said that local officials were working with law enforcement partners outside of Rhode Island. “That is a way in which we’re making sure that whether that subject has left the state, or the country, that we are using that full reach of the federal arm to track that individual down,” he said.
Brian Clark, a spokesman for Brown University, said in an email on Wednesday that the school was reviewing its security protocols.
“Just like cities and communities across the country, most spaces on campuses do not have guards or gates at every point of access,” he said.
The Barus and Holley building, the site of the shooting, was renovated within the past few years, officials said. The gunman attacked a classroom in the older section, where there are fewer cameras, and none of them captured the attack or the suspect, officials said.
The authorities have continued to offer assurances of safety to the nervous Providence community and anyone remaining on the nearly empty Brown campus. In the wake of the shooting, finals were canceled, and students have largely cleared out for the holidays.
“He will be caught,” Peter F. Neronha, Rhode Island’s attorney general, said on Wednesday. “And it’s just a matter of time before we catch him.”
The authorities have not discussed a possible motive for the attack, and they have not indicated that they believe anyone other than the gunman was directly involved. A young man described as a “person of interest” was detained for most of Sunday, but he was released after officials determined that he was not connected to the crime.
The two Brown students killed in the attack were MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old from Virginia whose family immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2011, and Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore from Alabama who was a pianist and the vice president of the university’s Republican Club.
Brown has not named the nine students who were wounded. Mr. Neronha said on Wednesday that six were still hospitalized, with one of those in critical condition.
Aric Toler contributed reporting.
Jacey Fortin covers a wide range of subjects for The Times, including extreme weather, court cases and state politics across the country.
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