Bloomberg
Luigi Mangione was charged with murder in New York for the fatal shooting of UnitedHealth Group Inc executive Brian Thompson after a five-day manhunt over the killing.
The 26-year-old Maryland native was apprehended earlier on Monday in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and held on five counts, including gun charges. New York is expected to seek his return to face murder charges over the shooting.
The New York District Attorney’s office said a warrant for Mangione’s arrest had been issued and a complaint against him remained under seal in the state. In New York, he faces charges for murder, criminal possession of a weapon and possession of a forged document.
This booking photo released Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections shows Luigi Mangione, a suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Photo: Pennsylvania Department of Corrections via AP
Details on a lawyer for Mangione were not immediately available.
New York will have to seek his return from Pennsylvania through extradition, which could take days.
Thompson, 50, was gunned down in the early morning of Wednesday last week outside a Hilton hotel in what New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Jessica Tisch called a “brazen, targeted” attack, as he walked to UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference.
Police said the gunman fled the scene into Central Park on a bicycle, and later left the city via a bus station at the George Washington Bridge.
Earlier on Monday, Mangione appeared in court in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, for a preliminary arraignment on charges in that state, including forgery, carrying a gun without a license and showing law enforcement false identification, a criminal complaint released by the Pennsylvania court system showed.
Officers said Mangione was carrying multiple fake identification cards and a US passport, as well as a “suppressor,” which they said was “consistent with the weapon used in the murder.”
Among Mangione’s belongings was also a handwritten three-page manifesto decrying the healthcare industry’s profit motives, authorities said. The slaying of Thompson comes amid an intensifying groundswell of anger against the for-profit insurance industry.
In New York, a conviction for second-degree murder carries a sentence ranging from 15 to 25 years to life in prison. The charge is a Class-A felony, the most serious type of crime under New York state law, and is defined as an intentional killing that shows “depraved indifference to human life.”
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, has ties to San Francisco and that his last known address is in Honolulu.
Mangione, who was valedictorian of Gilman School, an elite Maryland prep school, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a university spokesman said on Monday.
Additional reporting by AP
