Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday (Dec 9) in connection with the murder of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson.
He was working on his laptop at a local McDonald’s restaurant when one of the bystanders spotted him and matched his resemblance with the gunman.
He was found wearing a mask and a beanie at the fast food restaurant and possessed a fake New Jersey ID and a gun similar to the one used to kill Thompson and a silencer.
When the police officers asked if he had been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake,” according to the criminal complaint.
“As the commissioner stated earlier, a man was taken into custody today in Altoona, Pennsylvania, this morning. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. He’s a male, 26-years-old. He was born and raised in Maryland. We know he have, he has ties to San Francisco, California. And his last known address was Honolulu, Hawaii. He has no prior arrest history in New York. Members of the NYPD Detective Bureau are currently travelling to Pennsylvania with members of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to interview this subject,” New York Police Department, Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.
Originally from Maryland, Mangione attended the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and was living in Hawaii before the incident.
As per his LinkedIn profile, he is working with TrueCar, a California-based online auto marketplace, as a data engineer.
As per the news agency AFP, the company spokesperson said that Mangione “has not been an employee of our company since 2023.”
The 26-year-old hails from Towson, Maryland, near Baltimore and belongs to a wealthy Italian-American family.
‘Normal guy’
Mangione graduated the high school in the year 2016. In one of his previous interviews with a local newspaper appreciated his teachers for instilling in him a passion for learning beyond grades.
One of his classmates the Gilman School told AFP that Mangione struck him as “a normal guy, nice kid.”
“There was nothing about him that was off, at least from my perception,” this person said, asking that their name not be used.
“Seemed to just be smiling, and kind of seemed like he was a smart kid. Ended up being valedictorian, which confirmed that,” the former student said.
(With inputs from agencies)