Authorities on Monday announced the arrest of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione on firearms charges and identified him as a “strong person of interest” in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—who was fatally shot last Wednesday—saying Mangione matched the suspect’s description and appeared to have “motivation.”
Key Takeaways
- NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press conference that Mangione, 26, was arrested on firearms charges and said he is “believed to be our person of interest in the brazen targeted murder” of Thompson.
- She said Mangione was recognized in a McDonald’s and reported to local police, who then found he had “multiple fraudulent IDs,” a U.S. passport, a firearm and suppressor similar to what was used in the murder and a “handwritten document that speaks to both his motivation and mindset.”
- NYPD Chief Detective Joseph Kenny said Mangione will face gun charges in Pennsylvania and will be extradited to New York to face charges there, too.
- Mangione, a Maryland native, was last known to be living in Honolulu, Hawaii, has no prior arrest history in New York or elsewhere in the country, and he may have attended college in Pennsylvania, police said.
- Social media pages that appear to be for Mangione say he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer and information science in 2020 and was valedictorian at the Gilman School, a private K-12 school in Maryland, in 2016.
- The New York Times reported Mangione was the valedictorian when he graduated from the all-boys private school in 2016 and gave a speech describing his class as “coming up with new ideas and challenging the world around it.”
- The Daily Pennsylvanian—Penn’s student newspaper—reported that Mangione founded the school’s Game Research and Development Environment club and that he was inducted into the Eta Kappa Nu honor society for excellence in electrical and computer engineering before graduating in 2020.
- A LinkedIn page appearing to belong to Mangione describes internships at the Johns Hopkins Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics and Firaxis Games before going on to work as an engineer for TrueCar, a car shopping website based in California, where he’d been employed for four years.
- The Times also reported Mangione worked as a counselor in the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies Program in 2019.
What Do We Know About Luigi Mangione’s Life At Penn?
Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer and information science, according to social media accounts appearing to belong to him and the university’s alumni database.
The Daily Pennsylvanian—Penn’s student newspaper—reported that Mangione founded the school’s Game Research and Development Environment club and that he was inducted into the Eta Kappa Nu honor society for excellence in electrical and computer engineering before graduating in 2020. A post on an Instagram account seeming to belong to him as well shows him affiliated with the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi.
Surprising Fact
A Goodreads account appearing to be Mangione’s gave “Industrial Society and Its Future,” a book written by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, four stars out of five in January. A review written by the account said, “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies.
But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.” The review also quoted another person’s take about how “violence is necessary to survive.”
Have Police Named A Motive?
Police have not named a formal motive in the killing of Thompson. Officers found three 9mm rounds at the scene and bullet casings had the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” on them, which echo a phrase commonly used to criticize tactics insurance companies use to reject claims.
At Monday’s press conference, Kenny said the three-page handwritten manifesto found on Mangione when he was arrested is in the possession of the Altoona Police Department, but that “it does seem that he has some ill will toward corporate America.” Kenny also said there were no other “specific threats” to people in the document.
Who Is Nino Mangione?
Luigi Mangione is related to Nino Mangione, a Republican representative in the Maryland House of Delegates, The Baltimore Sun reported Monday. The Sun reported the two are cousins who are friends on social media. Forbes has reached out to Mangione for comment.
What Is Known About The Mangione Family?
The Baltimore Banner reported Mangione comes “from a prominent Baltimore family.” According to the Banner, his grandfather was a self-made real estate developer who owned country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station, and that his grandmother was “a supporter of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center” and the Baltimore Opera Company. The Mangione family has owned Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley, Maryland—northwest of the city of Baltimore—since 1986, according to the Banner.
Key Background
Thompson, 50, was the CEO of the health insurance division of the $550 billion UnitedHealth Group and was in New York City on Wednesday for UnitedHealth Group’s investor meeting—which was called off after the shooting. He was shot from behind just before 7 a.m. on Dec. 4 outside of the New York Hilton Midtown and was hit in the back and right calf, after which the suspect fled the area on foot and on an electric bike.
A Minnesota resident, Thompson had served as chief executive since April 2021 and had been with UnitedHealth Group since 2004. A video of the shooting showed the suspect walk out behind Thompson—who did not have a security detail—before firing multiple times. Prior to the arrest, police said they believed the shooting was “a brazen targeted attack” and searched New York City before saying they believed the suspect had left the city on a bus.
Luigi Mangione was arrested on gun charges in Pennsylvania and was named a person of interest in the murder of Brian Thompson.
Thompson’s wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News “there had been some threats,” but didn’t provide details on what the threats were. Thompson had two sons, one who just graduated from high school and one still in high school.
Police had been searching for the gunman by utilising diving teams in Central Park, flying helicopters, searching through security cameras in the area, maintaining drones and using dogs. They released several photos of the suspected shooter since Wednesday, though his face was largely covered in all of them.
