Person of interest in UnitedHealthcare shooting arrested in Pa., police say

Authorities said Monday that they had taken a 26-year-old man into custody in connection with the killing of Brian Thompson, a health insurance executive who was gunned down last week on a Manhattan sidewalk.

The shooting sparked a sprawling five-day manhunt that ended in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where police said Luigi Mangione, a Maryland native, was spotted eating at a local McDonald’s. He was arrested and charged with five counts, including possessing an instrument of a crime, providing false identification to law enforcement and carrying a firearm without a license. Police said Mangione had a ghost gun, along with a lengthy handwritten document indicating anger toward “corporate America.”

“He is believed to be our person of interest in the brazen, targeted murder of Brian Thompson,” Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, said at a news briefing.

Thompson, 50, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed Wednesday outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan, a stunning act of early-morning violence in one of New York’s busiest areas.

Police said it appeared that the suspect they were seeking escaped the city shortly after the shooting. Law enforcement officials said they were scouring reams of video footage and tips, but they pleaded with the public for more help, sharing several images of a person they said was wanted in connection with the killing.

That search continued until Monday morning, when someone in a McDonald’s in Altoona – a small city about 290 miles west of the Hilton where Thompson was killed – recognized Mangione and contacted authorities shortly after 9 a.m., authorities said.

According to court papers released Monday, police in Altoona arrived in the McDonald’s and found Mangione sitting at a table toward the back of the restaurant. Police described him as wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop on the table, with a backpack nearby.

The two officers approached and asked him to pull his mask down, and when he did so, both “immediately recognized him” from the images circulating of the person wanted in connection with the New York shooting, they wrote in the criminal complaint.

Soon after, the officers wrote, they asked “if he had been to New York recently and the male became quiet and started to shake.”

The officers asked him for identification, and he handed over a New Jersey driver’s license that police said later turned out to be a fake, the complaint stated. When officers told him he would get arrested for lying about his identity, he said his name was Luigi Mangione, according to the complaint.

Mangione was placed into custody, handcuffed and searched at the McDonalds, the complaint said. His backpack was searched at the police station, where officers said they found a black pistol and silencer that appeared to be 3D-printed, along with a loaded Glock magazine with six 9mm rounds.

Mangione was arraigned Monday evening in a courthouse near Altoona and denied bail, according to a court official. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney.

Joseph Kenny, the New York City police chief of detectives, said Mangione would have to be extradited to New York to face additional charges. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment on what those charges might be. Officials from that office and the New York police force traveled to Altoona on Monday as part of the investigation.

Peter J. Weeks, the Blair County district attorney, said that once Mangione is charged in New York, officials would seek to have him transported there. If Mangione challenges his extradition, the process could take up to 45 days, Weeks said.

Kenny said Mangione had a three-page handwritten document expressing “some ill will toward corporate America.” That document spoke to his “motivation and mindset,” Tisch said. Officials did not elaborate.

Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, had unspecified ties to San Francisco and was last known to be living in Honolulu, Kenny said.

Police said they were working to untangle Mangione’s movements before he arrived in Altoona and to scrub his accounts and postings across social media. Kenny said officials were “leaning toward” believing the attacker in the shooting was acting alone, adding that the investigation was ongoing.

Officials said Mangione was very careful about trying to avoid cameras and stay low-profile. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said during a briefing Monday evening that Mangione had traveled across the state. Shapiro described him as moving between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with stops in-between, including in Altoona.

The governor praised the person who summoned police to the McDonald’s, calling the individual a hero. He urged other people who might have information on Mangione’s movements in Pennsylvania to contact authorities.

UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of Thompson’s health insurance firm, pledged to continue working with law enforcement officials.

“Our hope is that today’s apprehension brings some relief to Brian’s family, friends, colleagues and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.

Mangione appears to have numerous ties to the Baltimore area. His address listed in the criminal complaint is in Towson, Maryland. Hours after his arrest, traffic cones blocked the entrance to the street in Baltimore County, where Mangione’s parents are believed to live, and journalists lingered outside a nearby barrier.

Mangione graduated from the Gilman School, an all-boys school in Baltimore, in 2016 as the high school valedictorian, headmaster Henry P.A. Smyth confirmed to the school community.

“We recently became aware that the person arrested in connection with the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO is a Gilman alumnus,” Smyth wrote in an email to people affiliated with the school. “This is deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation. Our hearts go out to everyone affected.”

Former classmates and teachers at Gilman recalled him as well-liked and smart.

“He was a good spirit,” said a former teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being publicly linked to Mangione or the shooting of Thompson. “He was very bright, vivacious and full of life. … I’m gut-punched because it just doesn’t fit the boy that I knew those years ago.”

Others who knew him at Gilman, who similarly spoke on the condition of not being identified, recalled him as someone with leadership abilities and technical savvy. As a leader of a student robotics club, Mangione helped design a robot that advanced to the Maryland state finals and a regional competition in Pennsylvania in 2016.

In a 2016 high school yearbook reviewed by the Washington Post, Mangione wrote that he “hated” being sent to Gilman as a sixth-grader, but it became “the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” In his valedictory speech, which was posted by Gilman, Mangione said he and his classmates had “the fearlessness to explore new things and the obvious ability to excel.”

Social media profiles that appeared to belong to Mangione offered glimmers of his life and background. One social media account that seemed to match his name and photograph posted about topics ranging from artificial intelligence to the societal effects of using social media. An image posted atop that profile showed an X-ray of what appeared to be a spine with four screws inserted.

Mangione had worked for the online car marketplace TrueCar until sometime in 2023, a company spokesperson said. A LinkedIn page with Mangione’s name and photo said he started working for the company as a data engineer in 2020, helping the company expand its sources for pricing and loan-payment data.

In the summer of 2019, Mangione worked as a head counselor at a Stanford University precollegiate studies program, according to a university representative. A fellow counselor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being publicly associated with the killing, said Mangione was smart, social and liked by all, organizing volleyball games and other group bonding activities.

Mangione also attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity from 2017 to 2020, said Ron Ransom, the fraternity’s executive director. The university did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Berman reported from Washington. Ben Brasch, Dan Diamond, Emily Davies, Olivia George, Daniel Gilbert, Annie Gowen, Drew Harwell, Tom Jackman and Anumita Kaur contributed to this report.