As the search for the suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City entered its sixth day today, police nearly 300 miles away in Altoona, Pa., announced they had responded to "reports of a male matching the description" of the suspect at a local McDonald's at around 9:15 a.m. Monday morning and arrested him on "unrelated charges."
Hours later, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference that the man arrested in Altoona had been identified as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, calling Mangione “a strong person of interest” in Thompson’s Dec. 4 killing.
The NYPD said on Friday that they believed the suspect had left New York City immediately by bus after the shooting. Authorities said Mangione was seen by a McDonald’s employee who recognized him from the photos released by the NYPD and published by news outlets, and the employee called the police.
At the news conference, NYPD police reported that Mangione was detained in Altoona after he showed local police a fake New Jersey ID and was found to have a ghost gun and suppressor similar to those seen in surveillance footage of the shooting. The fake ID is believed to be the same one used by the suspect to check in at a hostel on Manhattan's Upper West Side days before the shooting. Ghost guns are assembled using a kit or multiple separate pieces, making them unregistered and untraceable by law enforcement.
NYPD officials also said that Mangione had clothing — including a face mask — that looked similar to what was worn by the suspect, as well as a handwritten document that Altoona police say describes potential motivation.
"At this time, he is believed to be our person of interest in the brazen, targeted murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare last Wednesday in midtown Manhattan," NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters.
The handwritten, multipage document is still with the Altoona Police Department, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said, adding, “We don’t think there’s any specific threats to other people mentioned in that document, but it does seem that he has some ill will towards corporate America.”
What do we know about Luigi Mangione?
Yahoo News viewed public accounts on X, Facebook and Instagram that appeared to belong to Mangione, featuring his name and similar photos across the platforms. The Facebook and Instagram accounts have since been deleted. The X account with what appears to be Mangione's name and photo says it was created in 2016, while the Instagram account had in its first post what appears to be a photo of Mangione and his sister that was uploaded in 2018. (The number of followers for these X and Instagram accounts has skyrocketed in the last few hours by tens of thousands.)
At the NYPD press conference, Kenny said Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and his last known address was in Honolulu. The X account associated with Mangione lists his location as Honolulu, and the most recent photos on the Instagram page, posted in 2021, are tagged as having been taken in Fiji.
According to what is Mangione's Facebook page, the 26-year-old graduated in 2016 as a valedictorian from Gilman School, a private, all-boys school in Baltimore. A local Baltimore news outlet wrote that Mangione's graduation speech was about "maintaining tradition while also pioneering innovations."
The Instagram account associated with Mangione states that he attended the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate and was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. UPenn's Alumni site confirms that he graduated in 2020 with a dual bachelor's degree in computer engineering (BSE) and a master's degree in computer and information science (MSE).
The NYPD's Kenny also mentioned at the news conference that Mangione may have connections to San Francisco. The Facebook account associated with Mangione includes photos indicating that he worked as a counselor for the Pre-Collegiate Studies program at Stanford University, 35 miles outside of San Francisco, in 2019. Stanford confirmed his 2019 involvement with the New York Times.
The X account under his name, which was created in 2016 and only has 287 posts, does not appear to have any posts that specifically mention UnitedHealthcare or Thompson.