Luigi Mangione, 26, who is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Officer Brian Thompson, was arrested Monday after a customer spotted him at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles from Manhattan. Police said they found Mangione sitting alone at a table with a laptop at 9:15 a.m., wearing a medical mask, brown beanie, and dark jacket. An image shared on social media by the Pennsylvania State Police showed Mangione with a blue mask dangling from his ear as he ate a hash brown.
New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said a "combination of old-school detective work and new-age technology" led to the capture. Police had circulated various images of Mangione nationally during their five-day search, including surveillance footage from a Manhattan Starbucks before the shooting and a shot showing him smiling at an Upper West Side hostel. The suspect, a high school valedictorian and Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Baltimore family, was tracked to Pennsylvania after allegedly killing Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel where an investors' conference was being held.
According to CNN, Altoona Police Officer Tyler Frye and his partner found Mangione at the McDonald's on East Plank Road off Interstate 99 after an employee called to report a suspicious person. According to the criminal complaint, when officers asked Mangione to remove his mask, he first presented a New Jersey ID with the name Mark Rosario. The suspect "became quiet and started to shake" when asked about recent travel to New York City, eventually admitting his real identity, CNN reported.
According to documents obtained by ABC News, Mangione was carrying writings expressing "disdain for corporate America" and frustration with the US healthcare system. In writings addressed to the "Feds," he wrote: "I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming." Mangione claimed that while UnitedHealthcare "has grown and grown," America's healthcare system remains expensive while ranking "about No. 42 in life expectancy."
