I Don't Believe Anything We're Being Told About The Brown Shooting

While the "person of interest" who was detained Sunday in the Brown shooting has been released without charges, nothing that was either released officially or leaked (and almost all of it was leaked) makes any sense. For starters, he was s\taying at the Hampton Inn, a mid-range hotel that normally hosts "road warrior" business travelers. The one in Coventry, RI charges around $100 a night.

This doesn't fit any sort of profile for a weird guy who shoots people. Their living arrangements are either sketchy, or they're still living with their parents. Thomas Crooks was living with his parents; Brian Cole Jr was living with his mother and siblings. Ryan Routh had been living out of his car for several months before he tried to shoot Trump in West Palm Beach. Tyler Robinson was living with his trans boyfriend.

Aiden Hale, the Nashville school shooter, lived with her parents. Robin Westman, the Minnesota school shooter, lived in an apartment with a roommate. None of these people, although some had low-level jobs, could have afforded a $100-a-night hotel. We don't know why Benjamin Erickson was staying at the Hampton Inn, but it seems highly likely that this was work-related travel for a job that was responsible enough for an employer to pay roughly $200 a day for lodging, meals, and car rental, leaving air fare aside. This is a solid citizen, not suspect material. Whatever tip they claim to have received will come out in discovery.

As I noted yesterday, it should have taken law enforcement 20 minutes to review Hampton Inn security footage from the parking lot, hallways, and lobby, as well as his cardkey records, and verify that he'd been at the Hampton Inn the whole day as he claimed. This is Investigation 101 and shows the investigators were astonishingly inexperienced. Instead, they took him downtown and held him until they had no choice but to release him, meanwhile leaking his name, where he lived, incorrect speculation about his travel, and the likelihood that he had a mental health history. Benjamin Erickson deserves a full retraction, apology, and likely a hefty settlement from media and the Providence police.

As of yesterday, there's a whole new story, as Mark Halperin notes above. The first hinky thing here is Mark Halperin. Until last month, he'd been doing a very creditable job rebuilding his reputation after losing his media career due to sexual harassment allegations. His Morning Meeting show with Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine on 2WAY had become a highly popular, serious political commentary -- until both Spicer and Turrentine abruptly quit at the same time, due to unspecified reasons (we may at least assume Halperin hadn't hit on them).

Now we have Halperin resurfacing and claiming "sources" are telling him the Brown shooting was a targeted hit. Well, "sources" were saying Erickson probably had a mental health history, too. Here's the line "sources" are pitching:

Ivy rumor mill says that Ella Cook, one of the victims at Brown from Birmingham, Alabama, was a leader in a small conservative group that was opposed to trans ideology. Cops may have indicated to the family she was specifically targeted in the shooting.

Supposedly, killer entered with a plan and shot Cook in the face first. Cook was doing the review session with her normal person friend group.

. . . Many believe Ella’s opposition to trans ideology may have played a role in her being targeted. That’s what happened to Charlie Kirk, when a pro-trans left winger (allegedly) shot and killed him in front of his family and supporters.

But this doesn't fit any better than the Hampton Inn stuff. Yesterday, the story was that this was an anti-Semitic attack timed to conincide with Hanukkah, like the Australian beach attack. But neither of those killed at Brown, Ella Cook, an Episcopalian, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, apparently a Muslim himself, was Jewish. Whatever the shooter shouted just before he opened fire, "Allahu Akbar!" now seems at best incongruous. So now, there's a new line: Cook was a high-profile conservative.

But Cook was only Vice President of the Brown College Republicans, a group whose membership by all estimates is in the low double digits. Why target just the VP? If you want to make a statement, go for the top. And a poll from earlier this month said that conservatives at Brown tended to keep a low profile:

A fall 2025 poll from The Brown Daily Herald at Brown University indicates that conservative students on campus are far more likely than their liberal peers to self-censor in both social settings and the classroom.

The survey of 1,369 undergraduates found that 78 percent of respondents identify as liberal or progressive, while fewer than 7 percent identify as conservative. The political imbalance influences daily interactions: 72 percent of conservative students reported being afraid to share their political views in social situations.

There's another problem: the killer here strikes me as disorganized, like all the others named above. Why would someone planning a targeted hit do it in a packed lecture hall, dressed in a highly recognizable dark outfit with a mask, shouting a slogan? A professional killer wants to blend in, make the hit quickly, and get out. He doesn't shout slogans; tha's just an additional identifier. A professional dresses to blend in, and the strategy would likely be to walk quickly toward the target on a sidewalk, shoot with a silencer at very close range or maybe stab, and go on walking quickly away, probably before other bystanders even recognize what happened.

For someone to make a targeted hit in a lecture hall, when it sounds like this was an optional review session that the target may not even have planned to attend, and have it involve all the other unnecessary theatrics, just doesn't fit. It involves knowing the target's class enrollments and all sorts of other trouble, when a targeted hit could have been done much more simply and with even greater chance of getting away.

Add to that that this is all coming from "sources", while the Providence police are officially releasing almost nothing about the case -- except that the "sources" are almost certainly within the Providence police.

Rhode Island Officials held a press conference on Monday to provide updates on the Saturday shooting and ongoing investigation as the manhunt for the shooter remains underway.

Witnesses say the shooter “yelled something” before killing two students and wounding nine more, and early reports suggest the shooter shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire.

But Perez wouldn’t tell reporters what he said, claiming, “That’s part of the investigation.”

A reporter even pleaded with Perez to tell reporters what the shooter said to help the public identify him, reasoning that “it’s possible a friend or family member might recognize if the person said something that was significant.”

However, Perez claimed that he could not say, suggesting the case may be in jeopardy if he were to share this evidence.

But if the killer yelled "Allahu Akbar!", neither of his victims was Jewish, and one was Muslim. This points yet again to a disorganized perpetrator who's simply not capable of effective planning. What's unfortunate is that these people often enough just get lucky. I would say as well that Brown University's feckless security systems also contibuted to his good luck -- and it also appears that the Providence police are incompetent at investigation, while they're unable to keep their own management-level personnel from leaking.

The best move will be to take the investigation away from the Providence police and give it either to Rhode Island State Police or the FBI.