Suspect in health care CEO shooting graduated from Penn

Police arrested a suspect Monday morning in the brazen shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, and the 26-year-old man has ties to Philadelphia.

Luigi Nicholas Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., on gun charges in connection with a shooting. Police said Mangione was acting suspiciously after he was stopped and, upon further investigation, found to be carrying multiple false IDs, a 3D-printed ghost gun and suppressor similar to the one believed to have been used in the killing of Thompson, and a handwritten manifesto. One of the fake IDs found matches a fake New Jersey driver’s license used in New York to check into a hostel before the attack. Thompson was shot outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel by someone who then slipped away and has been the subject of an intensive manhunt.  

New York City Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference confirming that Mangione was a person of interest in the shooting of Thompson. New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that a McDonald’s employee recognized Mangione and contacted the police. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said that they believe the suspect acted alone. 

Mangione is a native of Towson, Md., and graduated from the Gilman, a Baltimore all-boys’ high school, in 2016 as the valedictorian. Gilman Headmaster Henry P. A. Smyth called the news of Mangione’s arrest “deeply distressing” in an email to the school community Monday.

Officials also said that Mangione had ties to San Francisco and Hawaii.

Mangione’s time at Penn

Mangione went to the University of Pennsylvania, the school has confirmed to multiple outlets, graduating in May 2020 with a bachelor of science in engineering and a master’s in engineering. A Penn Today article, from December 2018, detailed how he co-founded UPGRADE, a student-run club that developed video games.

A LinkedIn page with Mangione’s name and photo lists an internship with Firaxis Games in Baltimore, as well as teaching assistant positions at Penn and Stanford University. It also lists that he has worked for car pricing and retail site TrueCar for the past four years as a data engineer.

Internet sleuths have quickly turned many social media accounts that could be linked to Mangione, including a Goodreads account that has a review of a book by “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynnski, “Industrial Society and its Future.” The account also lists two books about dealing with back pain, which is notable because an account on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) with Mangione’s information has an X-ray image of someone’s lower back with four pins in it in the profile header. 

Another book that has been linked to this attack is 2010’s “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It,” based on those words — “deny,” “defend” and “depose” — being written on the shell casings found at the scene of the attack on Thompson. The book is by Jay M. Feinman, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University. 

Because folks have been asking: Delay, Deny, Defend paperback out of stock on Amazon. the only source. Restock soon. Kindle available. Links including bulk orders at https://t.co/7qFLsN8TAk— Jay Feinman (@JayFeinman) December 7, 2024

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