Authorities arrested a suspect and charged him with murder in the brazen Manhattan killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO after a quick-thinking individual at a Pennsylvania McDonald's spotted a man who officers found with a gun, mask and writings linking him to the deadly shooting.
The chance sighting at the fast food restaurant in Altoona led to a dramatic break in a challenging but fast-moving investigation that captivated the public in the five days since the shooting that shook the business world.
Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, had a gun believed to be the one used in last Wednesday’s shooting of Brian Thompson, as well as writings suggesting anger with corporate America, police said.
Late Monday, Manhattan prosecutors filed murder and other charges against Mangione, according to an online court docket. He remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where earlier in the evening he was charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night.
Mangione was sitting in the rear of the McDonald's wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop computer, court documents said. A customer saw him and an employee called 911, said Kaz Daughtry, an NYPD deputy commissioner.
Altoona Police Officer Tyler Frye said he and his partner recognized the suspect immediately when he pulled down his mask. “We just didn’t think twice about it. We knew that was our guy,” he said.
When one of the officers asked if he’d been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake," according to a criminal complaint based on their accounts of the arrest.
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In his backpack, police found a black, 3D-printed pistol and a 3D-printed black silencer, the complaint said. The pistol had a metal slide and plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel. He was taken into custody at about 9:15 a.m., police said.
Once at the police station, sources said, officers discovered the man had a gun similar to the one used in Thompson's killing, as well as a silencer and a fake New Jersey ID. The suspected gunman allegedly used a fake New Jersey ID when he checked into a Manhattan hostel last month.
Mangione had a ghost gun, a type of weapon that can be assembled at home from parts without a serial number, making them difficult to trace, investigators said.
Two senior law enforcement officials said the man in Altoona being questioned had the name "Mark Rosario" on his fake NJ ID. Three sources familiar with the matter said the suspected gunman checked into the hostel using a fake NJ ID with the name “Mark Rosario.”
Luigi Mangione has ties to the Bay Area, police say
Mangione graduated in 2016 as valedictorian from Gilman School, an all-boys high school in Baltimore, Maryland. He went on to the University of Pennsylvania, a spokesperson confirmed, and received a bachelor of science in engineering degree in May 2020, and also a master of science engineering degree. His focus was computer science and math.
Police said the 26-year-old was born and raised in Maryland, has ties to San Francisco and a last known address in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Stanford University on Monday said a person by the name of Luigi Mangione was employed as a head counselor under its Pre-Collegiate Studies program between May and September of 2019. It was not immediately known if the Mangione previously employed by Stanford is the same man police identified as a person of interest.
Social media pictures appear to show Mangione with several other Stanford counselors in 2019. A LinkedIn profile appearing to belong to Mangione shows he specializes as an artificial intelligence teaching assistant, designing lesson plans, and teaching AI to gifted high school students.
The LinkedIn profile also shows Mangione was last working at a company called TrueCar in Santa Monica since 2022. A spokesperson for the company said Mangione has not worked for them since last year.
Kenny said that police did not have his name prior to Monday and that Mangione has no known prior arrests in the country.
Mangione was being held in Pennsylvania on gun charges and will eventually be extradited to New York to face charges in connection with Thompson’s death.
Tracking a killer
Aided by surveillance cameras on nearly every building and block, police have been able to retrace the shooter’s movements.
They know he ambushed Thompson at 6:44 a.m. as the executive arrived at the Hilton for his company’s annual investor conference, using a 9 mm pistol that resembled the guns farmers use to put down animals without causing a loud noise. They know ammunition found near Thompson’s body bore the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose,” mimicking a phrase used by insurance industry critics.
Kenny said the fact that the shooter knew UnitedHealthcare group was holding a conference at the hotel and what route Thompson might take to get there suggested that he could possibly be a disgruntled employee or client.
Investigators know from surveillance video that the shooter fled into Central Park on a bicycle and ditched it around 7 a.m. near 85th Street.
He then walked a couple blocks and got into a taxi, arriving at 7:30 a.m. at the George Washington Bridge Bus Station, which is near the northern tip of Manhattan and offers commuter service to New Jersey and Greyhound routes to Philadelphia, Boston and Washington.
Investigators don't know what happened next. They are searching through more surveillance video but have yet to locate video of the shooter getting on a bus or exiting the station.
Police have determined from video that the gunman was in the city for 10 days before the shooting. He arrived at Manhattan’s main bus terminal on a Greyhound bus that originated in Atlanta, though it's not clear whether he embarked there or at one of about a half-dozen stops along the route.
Immediately after that, he took a cab to the vicinity of the Hilton and was there for about a half hour, Kenny said.
At around 11 p.m. on the night he arrived, he went by taxi to the HI New York City Hostel. It was there, while speaking with an employee in the lobby, that he briefly pulled down the mask and smiled, giving investigators the brief glimpse they are now relying on to identify and capture a killer.
NYPD detectives traveled to Atlanta to coordinate efforts there.
