Court records show New York prosecutors have charged a man with murder in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. Luigi Nicholas Mangione is being held without bail Tuesday in Pennsylvania after he was arrested and arraigned on gun, forgery and other charges the day before. He is expected to be extradited to New York eventually.
After UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was gunned down on a New York sidewalk, police searched for the masked gunman with dogs, drones and the city’s extensive surveillance system. Investigators analyzed DNA samples, fingerprints and internet addresses. Police went door to door looking for witnesses.
When an arrest came five days later, those sprawling investigative efforts shared credit with an alert civilian’s instincts. A customer at a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania noticed another patron who resembled the man in the oblique security-camera photos that New York police had publicized.
Luigi Nicholas Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, was arrested Monday in the killing of Brian Thompson, who headed one of the United States’ largest medical insurance companies.
Mangione remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was initially charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. By late evening, prosecutors in Manhattan had added a charge of murder, according to an online court docket. He is expected to be extradited to New York eventually.
It’s unclear whether Mangione has an attorney who can comment on the allegations. Asked at Monday’s arraignment whether he needed a public defender, Mangione asked whether he could “answer that at a future date.”
Mangione was arrested Monday in Altoona, Pennsylvania — about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of New York City — after the McDonald’s customer recognized him and notified an employee, authorities said.
Officers arrived to find Mangione sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant, wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop, according to a Pennsylvania police criminal complaint.
He initially gave them a fake ID, but when an officer asked Mangione whether he’d been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake,” the complaint says.
