A person of interest has been identified in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. That individual is now being questioned by police in Pennsylvania where he was located after bystanders saw him at a McDonalds and called police.
The person being questioned was at a McDonald’s, where customers thought he looked suspicious and called police, three law enforcement sources said.
He was found to have a fake New Jersey ID, a gun similar to the one used to kill Thompson and a silencer, two senior law enforcement sources said.
The gun, silencer and fake ID may point to this being the killer, but the clincher is that he was apparently carrying around an anti-healthcare company manifesto.
The man being questioned was identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, according to three law enforcement officials. Mr. Mangione, who was detained in the McDonald’s on Monday morning, was carrying identification with his name on it, along with fake I.D., one of the officials said.
Mr. Mangione showed the police the same fake New Jersey identification that the man believed to be the gunman presented when he checked into a hostel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on Nov. 24, a senior law enforcement official said...
Mr. Mangione was also carrying a handwritten manifesto that criticized health care companies for putting profits above care, according to two law enforcement officials.
Mangione is being held in Altoona for having the fake ID and the gun and NYPD detectives are already on their way to meet with him. Is he going to confess? Why claim innocence if you're proud of what you did? The fact that he was carrying the manifesto when he was arrested suggests he expected to be caught at some point.
So who is Luigi Mangione? The NY Post is reporting he's a former prep school kid with a degree from an Ivy League school.
The person of interest identified in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is an anti-capitalist former Ivy League student — who liked online quotes from “Unabomber’’ Ted Kaczynski raging against the country’s medical community...
Mangione was valedictorian of his 2016 high school graduating class at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to online sites. High school tuition at the all-boys school is nearly $40,000 a year.
I guess the anti-capitalist claim stems from the manifesto, i.e. companies putting profits above care. But he doesn't appear to be a progressive straight out of central casting. An X account (which appears to be his) shows him retweeting some people who would probably be described as on the right.
Mangione engaged with many accounts on X, including some right-wing figures.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 9, 2024
He despised the legacy media.
He didn't send out any posts regarding the election.
He frequently engaged with @waitbutwhy.
Luigi Mangione was tweeting Jonathan Haidt, Tim Urban, Thiel, pro-nuclear content, complaining about DEI.
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) December 9, 2024
HIs politics seem moderate and sensible.
Maybe the CEO guy just stole his girlfriend? She left him because he was wasting his time on AI safety instead of making money. pic.twitter.com/DspLG2LFsG
On the other hand, his GoodReads account includes a favorable review of the Unabomber's book in which he quotes someone suggesting that violence is an effective way to generate change when all else fails.
A take I found online that I think is interesting:
"Had the balls to recognize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere and at the end of the day, he's probably right. Oil barons haven't listened to any environmentalists, but they feared him.
When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it's not terrorism, it's war and revolution. Fossil fuel companies actively suppress anything that stands in their way and within a generation or two, it will begin costing human lives by greater and greater magnitudes until the earth is just a flaming ball orbiting third from the sun. Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn't possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense.
These companies don't care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?
We're animals just like everything else on this planet, except we've forgotten the law of the jungle and bend over for our overlords when any other animal would recognize the threat and fight to the death for their survival. "Violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators."
Obviously, he really believed that and (allegedly) acted on it. He apparently got that pro-violence quote from a Reddit climate forum.
Luigi Mangione seems to have cribbed much of his review of the Unabomber manifesto book review from a Reddit comment in r/Climate pic.twitter.com/HvO3LBBrQp
— Jacob Shamsian ⚖️ (@JayShams) December 9, 2024
Hopefully the manifesto will be released and we'll get a clearer picture of exactly what motivated him.
Update: CNN has a quote from the manifesto.
“These parasites had it coming” and “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done,” a police official who has seen the document told CNN...
The document railed against the health care industry and suggested violence is the answer, according to the official.
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