Authorities on Monday said they arrested a 26-year-old man carrying a gun and an anti-corporate manifesto in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Luigi Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s restaurant in the Pennsylvania city of Altoona, about 280 miles east of New York City, on gun-related charges. When he was detained, he had a gun like the one used in Thompson’s shooting, a suppressor, and the same fake New Jersey identification used to check into a New York hostel prior to the shooting, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference on Monday.
The police received a tip from an employee who spotted Mangione eating at the McDonald’s, Tisch said. New York Police Department officials said they believe he acted alone.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office charged Mangione on Monday with five felony counts, including second degree murder, according to the arrest warrant filed with New York’s Criminal Court. The other felonies relate to gun possession and presenting forged identification.
At the McDonald’s, Mangione was found with a three-page handwritten manifesto that reflected his “ill will toward corporate America,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joe Kenny said at the news conference. The full manifesto has not been released and is in the possession of the Altoona Police Department. The document specifically criticized health insurance companies, the Associated Press said.
Mangione grew up in Towson, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. Kenny said Mangione also had lived in San Francisco and Honolulu. Calls to Mangione’s family members were not answered Monday.
In a statement shared on social media, Mangione’s family said they were “shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest.”
“We only know what we have read in the media,” the family said in the statement.
“We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved,” it continued. “We are devastated by this news.”
Mangione was valedictorian in 2016 of his high school, the all-boys Gilman School in Baltimore, and went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania confirmed to STAT that Mangione graduated with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering in May 2020.
Records show Mangione had worked at TrueCar, a car pricing website, as a data engineer. A TrueCar spokesperson told STAT that Mangione “has not been an employee of our company since 2023.”
Tisch said police received hundreds of tips and used drones, canine units, and scuba divers in the search for Thompson’s killer. “This apprehension is thanks to the tireless work of the greatest detectives in the world,” she said.
Kenny said Mangione will face gun charges in Altoona, and after that, NYPD will work with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to extradite him to New York. NYPD officers traveled to Altoona on Monday to interview Mangione, and the department’s team is scouring his social media accounts to piece together his background and motive.
“We’re not done here,” Kenny said. “We’ll still be putting this together; we’re still going to be working very hard to get to a successful conclusion.”
In addition to the gun officers found on Mangione, Kenny said they also recovered clothing that matched those in photos of the shooting suspect. Before he was taken into custody, responding officers reported that Mangione was acting suspiciously.
The news followed several important updates in the high-profile case, including new photographs of the suspect in a taxi and the recovery of a backpack in Central Park.
Thompson, 50, was shot early in the morning on Dec. 4 as he was walking alone to UnitedHealth Group’s investor day in New York. Thompson, who lived in Minnesota and had a wife and two sons, had risen through the ranks at the country’s largest health insurer for over two decades.
Thompson’s killing unleashed a torrent of rage on social media over the dysfunctional state of the U.S. health care system. Some people even seemed to celebrate Thompson’s death, saying that his company’s policies have contributed to far more deaths.
