NEW YORK– A man with a gun believed to be similar to the gun used in the UnitedHealthcare killing CEO Brian Thompson was taken into custody Monday in Pennsylvania for questioning, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
The man is being held in the Altoona, Pennsylvania, area, about 230 miles (375 kilometers) west of New York City, the official said. The official was not authorized to discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The development came as dogs and divers returned to New York’s Central Park on Monday while using the dragnet Thompson’s killer stretched to a sixth day.
Investigators have been scouring the park since Wednesday’s shooting, searching at least one of the ponds for three days, looking for evidence that may have been thrown in.
Friday police found a backpack in the park they say the killer discarded as he fled the crime scene outside the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan to an uptown bus station, where they suspect he left the city on a bus.
But they had not yet found the gun or the shooter, nor identified him by name.
On Monday, K-9 units sniffed through leaf-covered planters among walkways in Central Park, near where police found the gunman’s backpack. Farther down the path that police believe ran through the park after the shooting, divers prepared and began searching a pond for the third day in a row.
Thompson, 50, was killed in what police said was a “brazen, targeted” attack as he walked alone to the Hilton from a nearby hotel, where UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, was holding its annual investor conference, police said.
The gunman appeared to “lurk for several minutes” before approaching the director from behind open fireNYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
Ammunition found near Thompson’s body carried the words ‘delay’, ‘deny’ and ‘depose’, an expression used by critics of the insurance industry.
We follow the shooter’s steps Using surveillance video, investigators say the gunman fled Central Park on a bicycle at 60th Street and Center Drive, emerged from the park without his backpack at 77th Street and Central Park West, and then dumped the bike near 85th Street around 7 a.m. .
He then walked a few blocks and hopped into a taxi, which arrived at 7:30 a.m. at the George Washington Bridge bus station, which is near the northern tip of Manhattan and offers shuttles to New Jersey and Greyhound routes to Philadelphia, Boston and Washington. , said NYPD Chief Joseph Kenny.
The FBI announced late Friday that it is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, in addition to the up to $10,000 reward offered by the NYPD. The police assume that the suspect acted alone.
Late Saturday, police released two additional photos of the suspect, which appeared to be from a camera mounted in a taxi. The first shows him outside the vehicle and the second shows him looking through the partition between the rear seat and the front of the cabin. In both cases, his face is partially obscured by a blue mask.
The search for the park has seen the NYPD take steps to minimize disruption to visitors, resulting in an odd combination of joggers, tourists and an active crime scene.
On Monday, a 50-meter (150-foot) section of the park was cordoned off with blue-and-white police tape so divers could change clothes and enter the water.
At one point, a group of about 30 French-speaking tourists followed a guide down a trail, but were unable to proceed because of the police tape. Before returning, many of them took out their phones to take a photo of the divers.