New York, Dec 10 (IANS): After a six-day manhunt for the killer of the CEO of the largest US health insurer, authorities have had a breakthrough with the arrest of a suspect in the shooting.
Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference that a man matching the suspect's description was arrested Monday morning in Altoona, 450 km from New York, and police were on their way there to question him. The man was identified as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione.
The killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare (UHC), on Wednesday outside a New York hotel when he was going there for an investor’s conference sent shockwaves at the higher echelons of corporate America.
Acting on a tip from a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant employee, local police arrested him. “He matches the description of the identification we've been looking for, and he's also in possession of several items that we believe will connect him to this incident,” Adams said.
New York Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Altoona police found on Mangione a “ghost gun” – made with a 3D printer – capable of firing .9 mm bullets that killed Thompson, a silencer, fake IDs like the one used by the suspect, and a three-page handwritten document.
The document, he said, listed grievances against the health insurance sector and corporate America.
He is reported to have graduated from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, where he studied computer science and lived in Hawaii.
The shooter 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 a backpack in Central Park, taking a taxi to a bus station, and heading out of the city on a bus.
He 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.
Now police say that the document found on him had messages against the insurance industry.
He also left behind a backpack with play money from a game.
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.
Many people shockingly expressed sympathy on social media with him because of their own grievances against health insurance companies and ideological opposition to big corporations.
Despite his careful planning and hiding his identity, Mangione dropped his mask when checking into a cheap hostel, and his full face was captured.
He was being held in Altoona on charges of using fake ID and illegally carrying a gun.
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.