Luigi Mangione, 26, is the man arrested today at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania and suspected of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The New York Times reports.
Mangione was found in possession of a gun and silencer similar to those used by the killer, as well as manuscripts against health insurance companies. According to the New York Post, he is a former student from a prestigious Ivy League university in Maryland. At the top of his class in high school, Luigi was considered a technological whiz by his classmates.
“These parasites were asking for it” and “it had to be done” are some of the sentences on the poster, found with the personal effects of the wanted man that New York Mayor Eric Adams has called a “person of strong interest.”
The reconstruction
The killer left Manhattan immediately after the crime, surveillance cameras across the city revealed, one of which saw him enter (but not exit) the bus station under the George Washington Bridge, where buses leave for the rest of the United States . Thanks to more than 70,000 "eyes" between public and private video cameras, authorities have reconstructed in detail the timeline of a "premeditated" crime and escape : arriving on the evening of February 24 on a bus from Atlanta, the killer stayed until dawn on December 4 in a hostel on the Upper West Side .
On the morning of the murder, he left at 5:30, probably on his bicycle, and arrived in Midtown at 5:41. There, he walked back and forth in the area before going into a Starbucks to buy water and a snack bar. He killed Thompson at 6:44, got back on his bicycle, and entered Central Park, where he left at 6:56. At 7, he took a taxi on West 86th Street to the bus station.
“He had it out for UnitedHealth,” Detective Chief Joseph Kenny speculated, directing the audience to the profile of an “angry employee” or “equally angry” customer of the insurance giant.
The UnitedHealth group, which owns the UnitedHealthcare division, has meanwhile strengthened security measures at its Minneapolis headquarters: CEO Andrew Witty announced this, referring to the "unfortunately intense" attention from the media and social media and the "negative, vitriolic comments" that circulated after the crime.
(Online Union)