Pennsylvania authorities on Monday arrested “a strong person of interest” in the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, an act that stunned the nation and triggered an around-the-clock manhunt for his killer.
Luigi Mangione, 26, of Towson, Maryland, was charged with carrying firearms without a license, forgery, tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of crime and providing false identification to police.
Mangione was tracked down in a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, carrying multiple fake IDs, including one with the name “Marc Rosario,” according to two senior law enforcement officials. He was recognized by a restaurant employee, who called local police, New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference.
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Investigators are looking into whether Mangione had recently traveled to Altoona by bus from Philadelphia, some 240 miles away.
Police said last week that the man suspected in the shooting arrived in New York City by bus in late November and had stayed at a Manhattan hostel.
The man who checked into the hostel also used a fake New Jersey ID with the same name, “Marc Rosario,” according to three sources familiar with the investigation.
Investigators uncovered a three-page handwritten document “that speaks to both his motivation and mindset,” Tisch said.
Magione also carried a ghost gun, which can be assembled at home and difficult to trace.
“As of right now the information we’re getting from Altoona is that the gun appears to be a ghost gun that may have been made on a 3D printer, capable of firing a 9 mm round,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.
Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 with an undergraduate degree in computer science and a minor in mathematics, while simultaneously earning a graduate degree in computer and information science, a spokesperson from the university confirmed.
In 2016, he graduated from Gilman School, an all-male high school in Baltimore.
“This is deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation,” Henry P.A. Smyth, Gilman headmaster, said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to everyone affected.”
Mangione appeared to have a significant online footprint, with accounts using his name and pictures dating back years.
One of his most active accounts was on the book review platform Goodreads, where he said he read 65 titles on topics ranging from Elon Musk to dieting.
The account did not show any record of him having read or commented on “Delay, Deny, Defend,” a book about the health insurance industry; police said shell casings found at the scene of the shooting had the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” written on them.
In January 2024, Mangione reviewed on Goodreads “Industrial Society and Its Future,” also known as the “Unabomber Manifesto” by Ted Kaczynski, that served as the ideological reasoning for Kaczynski’s mail bomb campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others.
“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,” Mangione wrote in his review.
Mangione also quoted a “take” he said he “found online,” that read, in part: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”
It also read: “These companies don’t care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?”
Elsewhere online, Mangione became significantly more active on X in 2021 after five years of not posting or reposting content.
He followed and endorsed some of the most influential thinkers in the new conservative-leaning tech space, including neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman, author and social media critic Jonathan Haidt, and writer Tim Urban. His posts focused on what he viewed as failures of modern society, including falling birthrates, the political gender divide and the compulsive use of social media.
A gym and wellness enthusiast, Mangione retweeted posts about masculinity and health, as well as the growing role and potential of artificial intelligence in reshaping society. Content he shared linked declining mental health and procreation to the increased reliance on technology. He also shared content that made fun of and criticized inclusive and “woke” political views.
An apparent fan of food writer Michael Pollan, Mangione shared content that interrogated the consumption of alcohol, psychedelic drugs and even coffee. According to Mangione’s Goodreads account, he was in the process of reading Pollan’s 2006 bestseller “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”
Mangione also displayed an interest in Japanese culture, posting a list of ideas to increase the birth rate in the country that included advocating against some of its cultural institutions. His cover image on X was a composite image that included an image of a Pokémon, an X-ray of a spine with instrumentation in it, and a picture that appeared to be of him hiking shirtless in Hawaii. His location on X was set to Honolulu.
Meantime, in New York on Monday, police continued to investigate the death of Thompson, 50, who was gunned down on the morning of Dec. 4 in front of the New York Hilton Midtown as he walked to an investor conference.
Police said the shooter appeared to wait for his intended target in what New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch described as a “premeditated, preplanned targeted attack.”
The masked shooter approached Thompson from behind and shot him at least once in the back and once in the right calf.
The gunman fled on foot, then on a bike into Central Park, according to police.
CORRECTION (Dec. 9, 2024, 9:39 p.m. ET): Due to an editing error, a previous version of this article misstated when Luigi Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in 2020, not 2022.
