ALTOONA, Pa. — After The CEO of UnitedHealthcare was shot on a sidewalk in New York, police searched for the masked gunman with dogs, drones and divers. Officers used the city’s muscle monitoring system. Researchers analyzed DNA samples, fingerprints and internet addresses. The police went door to door looking for witnesses.
When an arrest came five days laterthese extensive research efforts shared the honor of the instincts of an alert citizen. A McDonald’s customer in Pennsylvania noticed another customer who resembled the man in the oblique security camera photos released by the New York Police Department.
Luigi Nicholas Mangionea 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family was arrested Monday for the murder of Brian Thompsonwho led one of the largest health insurers in the United States.
He remained imprisoned in Pennsylvania, where he was initially charged with possession of a firearm without a license, forgery and providing false identification to police. Prosecutors in Manhattan added a murder charge late in the evening, according to an online court filing. It is expected that he will eventually be extradited to New York.
It is unclear whether Mangione has an attorney who could comment on the allegations. When Mangione was asked at Monday’s arraignment whether he needed a public defender, he asked if he could “answer that in the future.”
Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after the McDonald’s customer recognized him and notified an employee, authorities said. Police in Altoona, about 230 miles west of New York City, were quickly called to the scene.
They arrived to find Mangione sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant, wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop, according to a criminal complaint from Pennsylvania State Police.
He initially gave them a fake ID, but when an officer asked Mangione if he had been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started shaking,” the complaint said.
When he pulled down his mask at the officers’ request, “we knew this was our guy,” rookie officer Tyler Frye said at a news conference in Hollidaysburg.
New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference in Manhattan that Mangione was with him a gun like the one used to kill Thompson and the same fake ID the shooter used to check into a New York hostel, along with a passport and other fraudulent IDs.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Mangione also had a three-page handwritten document showing “some ill will toward corporate America.”
A law enforcement official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity said the document included a sentence in which Mangione claimed to have acted alone.
“To the FBI, I’ll be brief because I respect what you do for our country. To spare you a lengthy investigation, I clearly state that I have not collaborated with anyone,” the official said in the document.
It also included a sentence that said, “I apologize for any conflict or trauma, but it had to be done.” Honestly, these parasites just got it.”
Pennsylvania prosecutor Peter Weeks said in court that Mangione was found with a passport and $10,000 in cash, $2,000 of which was in foreign currency. Mangione disputed the amount.
Thompson, 50, was killed last Wednesday as he walked alone to a downtown Manhattan hotel for an investor conference. Police quickly viewed the shooting as a targeted attack by a gunman who appeared to be waiting for Thompson, coming up behind him and dismissed a 9mm pistol.
Researchers have said: ‘delay’, ‘denial’ and ‘impeachment’ were written on ammunition found near Thompson’s body. The words imitate a phrase used criticize the insurance sector.
From surveillance footage, New York investigators determined that the gunman fled on a bicycle to Central Park, emerged and then took a taxi to a bus station in northern Manhattan.
Once in Pennsylvania, he went from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, “trying to keep a low profile” by avoiding cameras, said Lt. Col. George Bivens of the Pennsylvania State Police.
Mangione is a grandson of a wealthy, self-made real estate developer and philanthropist and a nephew of a current Maryland state lawmaker. Mangione was valedictorian at his elite prep school in Baltimore, where in his 2016 graduation speech he praised his classmates’ “incredible courage to explore the unknown and try new things.”
He then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, a spokesperson said.
“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” Mangione’s family said in a statement that his cousin, Maryland Assemblymember Nino Mangione, posted on social media late Monday. “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for everyone involved.”
Luigi Nicholas Mangione worked for the car purchasing website TrueCar for a while and left in 2023, CEO Jantoon Reigersman said by email.
From January to June 2022, Mangione lived at Surfbreak, a “co-living” space on the edge of Honolulu’s tourist mecca Waikiki.
Like other residents of the shared penthouse that caters to remote workers, Mangione underwent a background check, said Josiah Ryan, spokesperson for owner and founder RJ Martin.
“Luigi was widely regarded as a great guy. There were no complaints,” Ryan said. “There was no sign whatsoever that would point to these alleged crimes that they say he committed.”
At Surfbreak, Martin discovered that Mangione had had severe back pain since childhood that disrupted many aspects of his life, from surfing to romance, Ryan said.
“He went surfing with RJ once, but he couldn’t because of his back,” Ryan said, but noted that Mangione and Martin often went to a climbing gym together.
Mangione left Surfbreak to have surgery on the mainland, Ryan said, and later returned to Honolulu and rented an apartment.
Martin didn’t hear from Mangione six months to a year ago.
Although the gunman obscured his face during the shooting, he left a trail of evidence in New York, including one backpack he dumped in Central Park, a cell phone found in a pedestrian plaza, a water bottle and a protein bar wrapper.
In the days following the shooting, the NYPD collected hundreds of hours of surveillance video and released multiple clips and still images in hopes of drawing the public’s attention to help find a suspect.
“This combination of old-fashioned detective work and new technology led to this result today,” Tisch said at the news conference in New York.
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Scolforo reported from Altoona and Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Contributing were Associated Press writers Cedar Attanasio and Jennifer Peltz in New York; Michael Rubinkam and Maryclaire Dale in Pennsylvania; Lea Skene in Baltimore and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu.