Investigators on Tuesday mapped the movements of a 26-year-old man accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan last week, after an extensive five-day manhunt ended with his arrest at a restaurant. fast food in Pennsylvania.
Authorities said they were also looking at whether the suspect, Luigi Mangione, was assisted by an accomplice before or after the shooting, which offered few immediate clues about the shooter’s identity.
Mangione was seen at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, last Monday by an employee who thought he looked similar to surveillance footage released by police. The gun, clothing and fake identification found in his possession are very similar to those used by the shooter, police said.
He faces weapons and forgery charges in Pennsylvania and was arraigned in Altoona last Monday.
Later the same night, New York prosecutors filed murder and weapons charges and are expected to request Mangione’s extradition in the coming days.
While the shooter’s motive remains unclear, police said Thompson, the chief executive of one of the country’s largest health insurers, was deliberately targeted.
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Mangione suffered from chronic back pain that limited his daily life, according to press reports. His profile on the X shows a background image from an X-ray examination with what appear to be screws and plates inserted into his lower back.
From January to June 2022, Mangione lived in the dormitory-like shared housing community Surfbreak for adults, where he led a book club and surfed, hiked and climbed, according to Hawaiian online news site Civil Beat and others. press vehicles.
The group’s founder, RJ Martin, said Mangione’s pain persisted for years, caused by misaligned vertebrae compressing his spinal cord, and that he went to the mainland at some point for surgery.
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But he “disappeared” in June or July, Martin told Civil Beat.
At one point, Mangione suggested that the book club read the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski — the Unabomber — as a joke, Martin said.
GHOST WEAPON
An Ivy League graduate and valedictorian of an all-boys private school in Maryland, Mangione had one and a silencer, authorities said last Monday. Both the weapon and his clothes were very similar to those worn by the shooter.
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He also had a large amount of cash and several fake identifications, including a fraudulent New Jersey ID that matched one used by the shooter to check into a Manhattan hostel days before the shooting, according to authorities.
Police found a handwritten document that offered insight into his motivation, authorities said. The text included the phrase: “These parasites had it coming,” the New York Times said, citing a law enforcement official.
