A 26-year-old suspect was charged with murder in New York City on Monday night in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A five-day manhunt resulted in his arrest 280 miles away in Pennsylvania.
Luigi Mangione of Towson, Maryland, was taken into custody by authorities at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9 after an employee called the police to report a suspicious-looking person, authorities said.
Mangione was charged with one count of murder, three counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of possession of a forged instrument by New York City prosecutors on Dec. 9, according to online court documents. Just hours before, he was also charged with forgery and carrying a firearm without a license by police in Altoona.
He has been denied bail and has not yet entered a plea to the charges. His next scheduled court appearance is on Dec. 23 at the Blair County Courthouse in Pennsylvania.
New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on TODAY on Dec. 10 that Mangione’s name was not on their radar until the McDonald’s employee called to report the suspicious person.
What do we know about the suspect?
After taking Mangione into custody, police in Altoona said they found a fake New Jersey driver’s license with the same name that the suspected gunman used at a New York City hostel, according to police.
“He was wearing a blue medical mask,” Altoona officer Tyler Frye said at a news conference on Dec. 9. “As soon as we pulled that down, or we asked him to pull it down, me and my partner and I recognized him immediately.”
Police also found a firearm, believed to be made by a 3D-printer, similar to the one used in the shooting of Thompson, who was gunned down from behind on a busy Manhattan street while walking into a hotel for an investor’s conference, according to police. In addition, they found a silencer and a mask “consistent” with those worn by the shooter.
Authorities said they also discovered a three-page document that references the health care industry. It was a handwritten note that said, in part, “These parasites had it coming,” senior law enforcement officials said while describing the note to NBC News.
What is the suspect’s background?
The Maryland native is an Ivy League graduate who comes from a prominent family.
He was the valedictorian of the Class of 2016 at the private all-boys Gilman School in Baltimore.
“This is deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation,” Gilman’s headmaster, Henry P.A. Smyth, said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to everyone affected.”
Mangione went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2020, the school confirmed to NBC News.
He also served as a head counselor for pre-collegiate studies at Stanford, the university confirmed.
Mangione was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at UPenn for four years, the organization confirmed. Alejandro Romero, who attended UPenn with the suspect, told NBC News they often played the popular video game “Among Us” together in which they played assassins.
“I just found it extremely ironic that, you know, we were in this game and there could actually be a true killer among us,” he said.
Mangione’s family has deep roots in Maryland, where it owns two country clubs in the Baltimore area. His cousin, Nino Mangione, is a Republican state legislator, his office confirmed to NBC News.
The 26-year-old worked as a software engineer in California after graduating college, according to his LinkedIn profile. The company said he hasn’t worked there since last year.
Mangione’s last known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a news conference. Clips of Mangione show him in a coworking space in Oahu.
He has no prior criminal history, Kenny said on TODAY on Dec. 10.
How are authorities trying to determine a motive?
Investigators are doing a complete dissection of Mangione’s social media posts.
He once reposted about the trolley problem, a philosophical debate concerning sacrificing one person for the greater good.
Mangione also posted on the book review site Goodreads. He posted a review earlier this year of “Industrial Society and Its Future.” The text is better known as the “Unabomber Manifesto” by Ted Kaczynski, who pleaded guilty in 1998 of killing three people and injuring nearly two dozen others with bombs over a 17-year period.
“It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out,” Mangione wrote.
Mangione also singled out an opinion he found online that said, in part, “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.
“These companies don’t care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids,” it continued. “They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?”
Mangione also posted an X-ray of a person’s back online. Investigators told NBC News they are looking into whether the photo belongs to Mangione and whether it has anything to do with the crime.
Conversations with those who knew Mangione revealed he was “clearly in a lot of back pain over a period of time,” NBC News correspondent Sam Brock reported on TODAY on Dec. 10. Brock added that somewhere between six months and a year ago Mangione went “completely off the grid” and outreach attempts by family went unreturned.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com