The Brown University shooting left two students dead and at least eight wounded. Unfortunately, what has unfolded since the shooting looks less like a serious, focused manhunt and more like an institutional panic about narrative control.
A gunman opened fire in the engineering building Saturday, killing two and wounding at least eight as students prepared for finals. Authorities still have no named suspect and have released only grainy images of a “person of interest.”
The FBI has gotten involved, releasing enhanced video of the "person of interest" and offering up to $50,000 for information, while agents go door to door, seeking camera footage. Despite repeated briefings, the lack of solid leads is obvious, and it is fueling suspicion that officials may be shielding a potential suspect.
Officials from Brown and the city have held press conferences but have offered evasive answers that frustrate the public rather than reassure it. For example, as PJ Media previously reported, police repeatedly refused to address reports that the shooter shouted “Allahu Akbar.” That alone has raised doubts about the investigation’s transparency and competence.
Then there is Brown University’s behavior, which has taken this story from tragic to deeply suspicious. Internet sleuths quickly noticed that Brown was quietly pulling down webpages connected to student assistant Mustapha Kharbouch, leaving many to wonder if there's a connection between their actions and the investigation.
Archived versions of those pages described Kharbouch as a queer Palestinian activist, a third-generation Palestinian refugee born and raised in Lebanon, a “Free Palestine” and LGBTQ activist with preferred pronouns, whom the university prominently celebrated on its website.
All references to Mustapha Kharbouch have been removed from Brown University’s website.
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 16, 2025
Archived profiles described Mustapha as a queer Palestinian activist and a third generation Palestinian refugee before they were taken down.
“Meet Our Student Assistants: Mustapha
Kharbouch… https://t.co/psT3e7iNLy pic.twitter.com/zFzafHiDom
As of now, law enforcement has not named him as a suspect, and officials keep repeating that there are “no suspects” in the case, even as his digital life is being scrubbed in real time.
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Brown’s explanation for this cleanup job only made things worse.
The university issued a statement saying that a member of the campus community was dealing with “harmful doxxing activity” and that it was “not unusual” to limit access to online information to protect someone’s safety.
Brown University should not be issuing this. @ProvidenceRIPD needs to state explicitly that Mustapha Kharbouch is not a person of interest.
— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) December 17, 2025
Quiet deleting in an active investigation should be met with extreme suspicion. See something, say something is not "irrevocable harm." pic.twitter.com/H3TOwCRsD1
A screenshot of that statement quickly circulated as critics pointed out the obvious timing problem.
Brown University claims "it is not unusual to take steps to protect an individual's safety in regards to their online presence."
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 17, 2025
Except, the entire reason this person is going viral in the first place is because THEY scrubbed him from their website sometime after the shooting… https://t.co/DxlWvY2IIb
When reporters tried to get straight answers, officials’ responses bordered on a meltdown. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha snapped when asked about the removal of Kharbouch’s profiles and scolded reporters that they were “playing a dangerous game” instead of calmly explaining what Brown had done and why.
🚨 HYPOCRISY ALERT: RI AG Peter Neronha
— Alec Lace (@AlecLace) December 17, 2025
"Leave it to us to identify the suspect..."
Also AG Neronha (same presser): "We need the public's help identifying the suspect."
This was in response to Brown University scrubbing pro-Palestine activist Mustapha Kharbouch's profile. pic.twitter.com/Fu0eJjsIvQ
Kharbouch is exactly the kind of person the left turns into a cause célèbre: queer, Palestinian, a refugee, a keffiyah-wearing campus activist wrapped in all the right buzzwords. Heck, the school was celebrating him on its website, probably for these very reasons. That doesn't mean that he is a suspect, but the school's actions have only raised speculation that he may be, at the very least, a person of interest. It's possible that they don't want the public to know yet.
Let's face it, the modern Left has spent years weaponizing the identities of mass shooters to score political points, blasting every incident that fits its “white, right-wing” narrative and burying anything that cuts against it. At the same time, there has been a disturbing rise in high-profile violent incidents tied to fringe elements within the LGBTQ community, especially trans shooters, which the media complex rushes to memory-hole the moment inconvenient facts come out.
So when a school like Brown races to scrub the online footprint of a queer, pro-Palestine activist while officials insist that there are no suspects, it does not reassure anyone. It looks like the system is placing its ideological needs over basic transparency and accountability.
Whether Kharbouch is connected to the shooting remains to be seen. At the very least, there seems to be an unorthodox effort by both the school and authorities to protect his identity during the investigation, as if the most significant threat they face is an unapproved narrative.
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