‘Person of interest’ in UnitedHealth executive’s murder faces gun charges

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A 26-year-old Ivy League graduate has been hit with a shooting and other charges in Pennsylvania as authorities investigate his ties to the murder of a senior UnitedHealth Group executive before an investor event in New York last week.

Police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, arrested Luigi Mangione, 26, of Maryland, at a McDonald’s restaurant based on a tip from an employee, New York police said at a news conference on Monday.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams described Mangione as a “significant person of interest” who was in possession of multiple items that may be related to the crime. NYPD detectives and officials from the District Attorney’s Office are traveling to Pennsylvania to interview Mangione, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tish said.

Mangione was in possession of an untraceable “ghost gun” equipped with a silencer and a fake New Jersey ID card that belonged to the man suspected of shooting Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson Matches the description.

New York Police Department Detective Joseph Kenny said Mangione also carried a handwritten three-page document outlining “some ill will toward corporate America” ​​but without naming any specific individuals. .

He made his first court appearance in Pennsylvania on Monday night, charged with weapons violations, forgery and false identification.

Mangione is an engineering graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, matching his description, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was born and raised in Maryland, and his last known address was Honolulu, Hawaii, the NYPD said.

The development came after a five-day manhunt that saw NYPD detectives and federal investigators crisscrossing the city and nearby states trying to solve the murder that shocked New York and corporate America.

“In just over five days, our NYPD investigators combed through thousands of hours of video, followed hundreds of leads, and processed every piece of forensic evidence — DNA, fingerprints, IP addresses and so on – to tighten the network.

The New York Police Department has released CCTV images of the suspect staying at a hotel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side before the murder and in the back of a taxi after the murder. Tisch attributes the progress of the case to the images: “The images we shared with the public were widely shared, and the tips we received led to the recovery of critical evidence,” she said.

Thompson was murdered before dawn on his way to an investor event organized by UnitedHealth Group at a Marriott hotel near Sixth Avenue in downtown Manhattan, raising concerns about the safety of senior executives.

The murder also sparked debate about the state of health care in the world’s most expensive health care system – UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest insurance company, covering nearly 50 million Americans. “We hope today’s arrest provides some comfort to Brian’s family, friends, colleagues and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy,” UnitedHealth said.

Thompson was shot three times outside the downtown Marriott Hotel at 6:45 a.m. local time and was pronounced dead at nearby Mount Sinai Hospital shortly after. Detectives later found bullet casings at the scene inscribed with the words “deny” and “defend” – a possible nod to a 2010 book about how insurance companies deny claims.

Since then, the New York Police Department has gradually pieced together the killer’s whereabouts before and after the shooting. The suspect arrived in New York in late November and stayed at a hotel on the Upper West Side.

After the shooting, he first rode his e-bike through Central Park toward a residential area, where his backpack was later found. He then went to an interstate bus station, where he boarded a bus out of town.