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Police have detained a person of interest in the connection with the murder of a senior UnitedHealth Group executive ahead of an investor event in New York last week.
Following a tip from a member of the public, local police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, apprehended Luigi Mangione, 26, of Maryland at a McDonald’s restaurant, Jessica Tisch, New York Police Department commissioner, said at a press conference on Monday.
Eric Adams, the New York mayor, described Mangione as a “strong person of interest” in possession of several items potentially connected to the crime. Tisch said that NYPD detectives alongside officials from the district attorney’s officer were heading to Pennsylvania to interview Mangione.
Mangione was in possession of an untraceable “ghost gun” with a suppressor and fake New Jersey ID card matching the description of those used by the individual suspected of shooting Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, the Minnesota-based group’s insurance unit, before dawn on December 4.
Mangione was also carrying a handwritten three-page document that suggested “some ill will towards corporate America” but did not mention any specific individuals, said Joseph Kenny, the NYPD chief of detectives.
Mangione was an engineering and computer science graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, according to a LinkedIn profile. He was born and raised in Maryland, and his last known address was Honolulu, Hawaii, police said.
The development comes after a five-day manhunt in which NYPD detectives and federal investigators have criss-crossed the city and nearby states in an attempt to solve the murder that shocked New York and corporate America, combing thousands of hours of video footage and offering a reward of up to $50,000 for any tips leading to an arrest.
The NYPD released CCTV images of the suspect in a hostel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan before the murder and in the back of taxi following the killing.
Thompson’s murder before dawn on his way to an investor event organised by UnitedHealth Group at a Marriott hotel off Sixth Avenue in midtown Manhattan has raised concerns in corporate America about the security of high-ranking executives.
The killing has also fuelled a debate about the state of medical care in the world’s costliest healthcare system — UnitedHealthcare is the country’s biggest insurer, covering nearly 50mn Americans.
Thompson was shot from behind three times outside the Marriott Midtown hotel at 6.45am local time, before being pronounced dead shortly afterwards at nearby Mount Sinai hospital. Detectives later discovered bullet casings at the scene with inscriptions including “deny” and “defend” — a possible nod to a 2010 book about how insurers deny claims.
Since then the NYPD gradually pieced together the killer’s movements before and after the shooting. The suspect arrived in New York in late November, staying in a hostel on the Upper West Side.
Following the shooting, he first travelled uptown on an e-bike through Central Park, where his backpack was later recovered. Officers are yet to recover the bicycle, which he is believed to have dumped. Then, he made his way to an interstate bus station, which he was seen on CCTV entering but not exiting, leading officers to believe that he had left the city.
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