UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot lifeless by a masked gunman outdoors a New York Metropolis lodge final week in an obvious assassination that has gripped the general public’s creativeness.
CCTV footage of the incident within the early hours of December 4 reveals the suspect drawing his weapon and firing at the very least thrice at shut vary. The 50-year-old CEO drops to the ground within the video, later dying from his wounds.
After days of hypothesis as to the motivation and identification of the gunman, police within the US state of Pennsylvania on Monday arrested 26-year-old Luigi Nicholas Mangione.
Right here’s what we all know in regards to the man named as a “sturdy individual of curiosity” within the deadly taking pictures.
Arrest
New York Police Division (NYPD) Commissioner Jessica Tisch mentioned Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a employee recognised the suspect from police images and alerted authorities.
Mangione was discovered sitting at a desk a silver laptop computer and carrying a blue medical masks, in accordance with authorities.
When requested if he had been to New York not too long ago, Mangione “grew to become quiet and began to shake”, in accordance with a prison grievance.
Mangione was carrying a US passport and a number of faux IDs on the time of his arrest, together with one with the identify Mark Rosario, which was used to examine right into a hostel in New York Metropolis earlier than the taking pictures, in accordance with Tisch.
Mangione additionally had a silencer and a gun “each per the weapon used within the homicide”, in accordance with police.
Police suspect the weapon to be a “ghost gun” – one assembled at residence with no serial quantity, probably made utilizing a 3D printer.
Tisch mentioned Mangione was carrying a “handwritten doc” which outlines “each his motivation and mindset” for Thompson’s homicide.
Authorities late on Monday charged Mangione with homicide, possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and offering false identification to police.
Motivation
Police haven’t publicly launched that handwritten observe, nor provided particulars about its contents.
US media, citing unnamed legislation enforcement sources, reported that the observe contained the traces, “These parasites had it coming” and “I do apologise for any strife and trauma, however it needed to be accomplished”.
Investigators mentioned final week the phrases “defend”, “deny” and “depose” have been written on the casings of bullets discovered on the scene of the homicide.
Many have interpreted the phrases as a nod to ways allegedly utilized by US medical insurance firms to keep away from paying claims to sufferers, speculating that Mangione might have acted in anger in opposition to the trade.
Perception into Mangione’s attainable worldwide will also be present in a sympathetic overview of Industrial Society and Its Future, aka the Unabomber Manifesto, posted from what seems to be his account on the web site Goodreads.
The overview describes Ted Kaczynski – who was liable for a decades-long bombing marketing campaign throughout the US that killed three individuals and injured 23 others – as an “excessive political revolutionary”.
“It’s straightforward to shortly and inconsiderate write this off because the manifesto of a lunatic, with a purpose to keep away from dealing with among the uncomfortable issues it identifies. Nevertheless it’s merely unimaginable to disregard how prescient a lot of his predictions about fashionable society turned out,” the overview reads.
The overview additionally states that “violence is critical to outlive” when all different types of communication fail, calling those that reject this notion “cowards and predators”.
The identical Goodreads account additionally favored a quote by creator Kurt Vonnegut studying: “America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, however its persons are primarily poor, and poor Individuals are urged to hate themselves”.
a favored quote from (what appears to be) Luigi Mangione’s Goodreads account pic.twitter.com/vUjGgWsFsa
— Jessica (Ka) Burbank (@JessicaLBurbank) December 9, 2024
Background
Mangione was born right into a rich household within the US state of Maryland, the place he graduated from an elite all-boys non-public establishment, the Gilman Faculty, as highschool valedictorian in 2016.
Mangione then attended the College of Pennsylvania, graduating from the Ivy League college in 2020 with a bachelor’s and grasp’s diploma in pc science and a minor in arithmetic.
Stanford College has confirmed that an individual by the identical identify was employed on the college between Could and September of 2019, working as a head counsellor beneath the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Research programme.
Mangione, who developed a sport app as an adolescent, labored as a “information engineer” at a automobile procuring agency known as TrueCar from November 2020, in accordance with his LinkedIn profile. A TrueCar spokesperson mentioned that he had not labored there since 2023.
Mangione lived in Hawaii in accordance with his now-suspended X account, the place he recurrently posted about technological advances like synthetic intelligence, health and wholesome residing.
The banner on his profile included an X-ray picture of an individual’s decrease again with what seems to be screws and plates inserted into it.
Different evaluations discovered on Mangione’s Goodreads account have been associated to well being and therapeutic again ache, together with, Crooked: Outwitting the Again Ache Trade and Getting on the Street to Restoration.
