A man suspected of gunning down the chief executive of United Healthcare last week was arrested in a small city in the US state of Pennsylvania on Monday after being identified by a McDonald’s employee, US media reported.
The suspect, 26, faces five counts including carrying a firearm without a license, possessing instruments of a crime and providing law enforcement with a fake ID.
On Wednesday, Brian Thompson, 50, the chief executive of United Healthcare, was gunned down in the early morning in front of a midtown Manhattan hotel. Law enforcement had been on a manhunt for the suspect ever since, and posted a few photos of whom they believed to be behind the crime.
Officials said a McDonald’s employee at one of the fast food chain’s locations in Altoona, Pennsylvania, recognized the man and called the US emergency number, 911. Police said the man “started to shake” when they asked him if he’d been in New York recently.
He was booked at the Blair County Courthouse and bail was denied.
Police said the man, a Maryland native who had lived in Hawaii, was found with a gun and a handwritten note that indicated “ill will toward corporate America,” said Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives for the New York Police Department, according to the Washington Post.
Authorities found a black pistol and silencer that appeared to have been made from a 3-D printer as well as a loaded Glock magazine and six 9mm rounds, the New York Times reported.