Peter Nerona

These investigations are like threads that you pull on a garment, and some of them you pull and the garment doesn't open up, and other ones you pull and the garment comes undone.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Nerona was among the officials announcing the setback in the case.

He says it's not unusual for an investigation to change course after early evidence doesn't check out.

Nerona vows that investigators will find the gunman, even if the timing is uncertain.

Two students were killed and nine other people, eight of them students, were injured during the shooting Saturday.

The gunman's whereabouts remain unknown and investigators have yet to cite a motive.

For NPR News, I'm Ian Donis in Providence, Rhode Island.

Certainly there was some degree of evidence that pointed to this individual, but that evidence needed to be corroborated and confirmed.

And over the last 24 hours, leading into just very, very recently, that evidence now points in a different direction.

So what that means is that this person of interest needs to be and should be released.