By Gus Saltonstall
Luigi Mangione, 26, was charged with murder Monday night in connection to the fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on December 4, according to online court records. He is also charged with three gun-related charges and forgery.
Mangione was taken into custody Monday morning in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after an employee recognized him and called local police, The New York Times reported.
At the time of arrest, Mangione was carrying a gun, a silencer, and false identification cards, including the fake ID from New Jersey that authorities believe the gunman used to check into the HI New York City Hostel on the Upper West Side, according to reports.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Jospeh Kenny said during a press conference on Monday that the weapon recovered appears to be a ghost gun that was assembled from parts manufactured by a 3-D printer.
Additionally, Mangione was carrying a handwritten manifesto when he was taken into custody that criticized the healthcare industry, sources told The New York Times and CNN.
Mangione has no prior arrests and was the valedictorian of the Gilman School, a private high school in Maryland, before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2022 with a degree in engineering, according to multiple reports.
“I remember him being normal,” a person who overlapped as a student with Mangione for two years at the Gilman School, exclusively told West Side Rag on the condition of anonymity. “Kind of quiet, a little nerdy. Definitely smart. Definitely felt like he was a genuine guy, not a jerk.
The Gilman School, which confirmed to CNN that Mangione graduated in 2016, sent an email to its community on Monday afternoon calling the arrest of its former student, “deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation.”
Mangione is being held in a Pennsylvania state correctional facility but is expected to be extradited to New York to face charges connected to the shooting of Thompson, Kenny also said during the press conference.
You can watch the full NYPD press conference — HERE.
Please check in for updates as new information becomes available.
The Upper West Side Connection
In the hours and days after the fatal shooting of Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on December 4, multiple details related to the Upper West Side appeared.
The suspect stayed in the HI New York City Hostel on Amsterdam Avenue between West 103rd and 104th streets for around 10 days prior to the shooting, where he shared a room with two other men. A photo of the suspect smiling at a receptionist within the hostel also was widely shared by law enforcement as the clearest picture of his face.
Following the shooting, the suspect biked through Central Park, where he is believed to have dumped his backpack, before exiting near 77th Street and Central Park West and catching a cab at 86th Street and Columbus Avenue.
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Eric Adams will be taking credit for his capture, so will Tisch.
The truth is it was average Joes that spotted him in PA.
Dump Adams, he has turned this city into a cesspool.
That goes foe Alvin Bagg too.
Career criminals should be in jail.
Thank you and have a peaceful day !
The first thing they literally both did was give credit to the people who turned him in.
The press-conference transcript: https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/910-24/transcript-mayor-adams-holds-in-person-media-availability .
And as for “career criminals”: Luigi had, at least in New York, “no criminal record” (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/unitedhealthcare-ceo-killing-suspect-arrested).
I watched it LIVE when the news first broke, and it’s there’s also in the link in the article posted here.
The resources deployed by the NYPD in this case were impressive.
So when can we expect a similar level of motivation and performance to solve the murder of a teen on John St or the shooting on Canal St of a member of the public by an individual who is said to be unbalanced? Both happened the day after the Thompson killing.
I wish all murder victims got this level of attention, not only multi-millionaires.
This. And – even more after the Penny verdict – anyone “unbalanced” with any history of meds noncompliance and of causing harm to self or others should be housed in supervised supported care …but that will probably not get headlines. So sad.
So hard to understand why such a smart guy didn’t ditch the gun and the fake ID’s. It’s like he wanted to be caught.
From some other alleged snippets from his social media, there’s a non-zero possibility that he’d experienced a serious episode of mental illness. But too early to say.
An episode of mental illness or not, if he did it – life in prison.