The suspect turned out to be a ‘hot Italian tech bro gym rat’ according to one description
The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate suspected in the assassination of UnitedHealthcare chief executive in New York City has been tracked down and arrested at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, the NYPD has announced.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot on Wednesday morning in Manhattan, by a masked and hooded attacker who apparently waited for him. The suspect escaped to Central Park, where he left a backpack, but then disappeared.
On Monday morning, police arrested Luigi Nicholas Mangione at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania – about 440 kilometers west of New York City. An employee at the fast-food restaurant reportedly recognized him by the very distinct eyebrows on the wanted poster.
Mangione was found with a gun and a silencer “consistent with those used in the murder,’‘ NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press conference after the arrest was announced.
“He was sitting there eating,’‘ NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters.
The fake ID Mangione showed to detectives at the restaurant had the name “Mark Rosario,” the same as the suspect used to rent a room in New York, according to police. Officers also recovered a handwritten manifesto that reportedly said “These parasites had it coming,” as well as other fake IDs, and a face mask.
“At this time, he is believed to be our person of interest in the brazen, targeted murder of Brian Thompson,” Tisch said. In the meantime, Mangione was detained on gun charges.
Police believe Mangione’s motive to shoot Thompson was the healthcare industry’s treatment of a sick relative, the New York Post reported citing unnamed sources. One of the banner photos on Mangione’s social media showed an X-ray of a serious spinal injury.
Mangione’s social media accounts, still active as of Monday evening, showed him as a native of Towson, Maryland who was valedictorian at the Gilman School in Baltimore in 2016, before going on to University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in 2020 with both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in computer science. He worked for a California-based car company, but his last known address was in Hawaii.
Mangione’s X account featured mostly reposts promoting climate activism, lab-grown food, and fitness. He has retweeted neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and World Economic Forum ideologue Yuval Noal Harari, praised a book by Tim Urban as “the most important philosophical text of the early 21st century,” and argued that the solution to failing birthrates was involved encouraging “natural human interaction, sex, physical fitness and spirituality.”
The book review site Goodreads showed him as having read 295 titles. Among the many books he reviewed was ‘Industrial Society and Its Future’ by Ted Kaczynski, the infamous ‘Unabomber’.
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