December 10, 2024

IANS - New York

Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested Monday morning in Altoona in adjoining Pennsylvania state after a customer recognised him at a McDonald's fast-food restaurant and alerted an employee who called police.

He is alleged to have shot dead Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare (UHC), on Wednesday as he was walking to a hotel on New York's Avenue of the Americas for an investors' conference.

The brazen killing sent waves of fear among the higher echelons of corporate America.

The charges were filed in a Manhattan court by New York prosecutors while Mangione is being held in Pennsylvania on charges of illegally owning a gun and using a fake ID.

A "ghost gun" and a silencer made with a 3D printer, as well as a fake ID he had used at a New York hostel, were found on Mangione, providing a link to the killing, according to police.

He also had on him a three-page handwritten manifesto that, according to reports quoting law enforcement, criticised healthcare companies mentioning UHC and took responsibility for the killing.

On a website devoted to books, he reviewed 'Industrial Society and Its Future' by an anarchist mathematician known as the Unabomber, who killed with bombs sent by post three people and injured more than 20 whom he accused of destroying nature through technology.

Mangione wrote on the bullets, "deny," "depose," and "defend," which are terms used by insurance companies when they refuse to pay for treatments claiming they are not covered by the policies.

They had some similarities to the title of a book criticising the insurance industry, 'Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It', by Jay Feinman.

While his connection to UHC is not clear, he is said by his friends to have suffered a serious back injury and underwent surgery.

He graduated at the top of his class from an exclusive school in Maryland and obtained both a bachelor's and a master's degree in only four years from the University of Pennsylvania.

He is reported to have a keen interest in video games, and along with his friends in high school, he developed a game app. After graduating from university, he worked as a game developer.

Mangione comes from a family of real estate developers who also own a nursing home and a radio station.

Altoona police said that he did not offer any resistance when they confronted him at the restaurant and accompanied him to the police station, where they found the gun in his backpack.

He was produced in a local court in Pennsylvania on the local charges and was ordered held without bail.

Under US laws, a person arrested in a state cannot automatically be sent to another state, and police have to go through an extradition process in a local court to move a suspect unless the person voluntarily agrees to go.

Mangione displayed sophistication in carrying out the attack, waiting for Thompson outside the hotel around the time he would be there, getting away after the shooting on an electric bicycle, ditching it and a backpack in Central Park, taking a taxi to a bus station, heading out of the city on a bus, and lying low till he was sighted at McDonald's.

The one flaw in his scheme of hiding his identity was when he lowered his medical-type mask for an instant at the check-in at the hostel when his full face was captured on video.

Mangione received support on social media from people critical of corporations, particularly those in the healthcare sector.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said, "In some dark corners, this killer is being hailed as a hero. Hear me on this: he is no hero."

Addressing a news conference on the arrest, he said that the trend was "deeply disturbing, as some have looked to celebrate instead of condemning this killer."

Thompson, 50, became the CEO of the Minnesota-based UHC in 2021 after working his way up during his 20-year career with the company.

His annual salary was nearly $10 million, heading the company with 140,000 employees and annual revenues of $281 billion.

A Senate panel's report criticised UHC for a high rate of denial of claims.

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