InstagramA profile of the 26-year-old man charged with murder in last week's fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City is emerging.
Police announced Monday that they arrested Luigi Mangione after identifying him at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Officials said the citizen, from Baltimore, Maryland, was found in possession of a so-called ghost gun, a largely untraceable firearm, and a three-page handwritten document indicating “motive and mentality.”
Who is Luigi Mangione?
Mr. Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and has ties to San Francisco, Calif., according to New York Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenney.
Police said he had never been arrested before in New York and his last prior address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.
He is from a prominent Baltimore family and attended a private boys' high school in Baltimore, called the Gilman School, according to school officials.
Mr. Mangione was named valedictorian, usually the student with the highest academic achievements in the class.
In a statement, the school described the situation as “extremely sad.”
Freddie Leatherbury, a former classmate, told the Associated Press that Mangione came from a wealthy family, even by that private school's standards. “Quite frankly, everything was going his way,” Mr. Leatherbury said.
Speaking to CBS News, the BBC's US partner, another colleague anonymously described himself as a close friend of Mr Mangione, saying the shooting suspect “didn't have any enemies” and was “a top student for some reason”. “.
Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science, according to the university, and founded a video game development club.
A friend who attended an Ivy League college at the same time as Mr. Mangione described him as “a very ordinary person” and “a smart person.”
Mangione was working as a data engineer at TrueCar, a retail website for new and used cars, according to his social media profiles. A company spokesman told the BBC that he had not worked there since 2023.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Mangione previously worked as a programming intern at Firaxis, a video game developer.
He also spent time in a co-living surfing community in Hawaii called Surfbreak. Sarah Nehemiah, who knew him at the time, told CBS he left because of a back injury aggravated by surfing and hiking.
Department of Corrections of the Palestinian AuthorityWhat leads do police have on a possible motive?
According to investigators, a three-page handwritten document found in his possession indicated a motive. They said the pages expressed “bad faith” toward American companies.
“These parasites came,” one senior law enforcement official told the New York Times. “I apologize for any conflict and trauma, but it had to be done.”
Investigators say the words “deny,” “defend” and “dismiss” were written on shell casings found at the scene of Mr. Thompson's killing.
Critics of health care insurers call these the “three Ps of insurance” — the tactics companies use to deny payment claims from patients.
His friends told American media that he underwent back surgery. The background image on the X account believed to belong to Mangione shows an X-ray of the spine containing hardware.
However, it is unclear to what extent his own experience in the health care system shaped his views.
A person matching their name and photo had an account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review site, where they read two books about back pain in 2022, including one titled Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry.
He also gave four stars to a text called “Industrial Society and Its Future” by Theodor Kaczynski – also known as The Unabomber Manifesto.
Starting in 1978, Kaczynski carried out a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens of others, until he was arrested in 1996.
In his review, Mr. Mangione acknowledged that Kaczynski was a violent person who killed innocent people, but the book should not be dismissed as a madman's statement, but rather an act of radical political revolution.
His social media profiles also indicate that he has fallen out of contact with family and friends in recent months.
In a post on X in October, someone tagged an account believed to be Mr. Mangione's and wrote: “Hi, are you okay? No one has heard from you for months, and it looks like your family is looking for you.”
Obtained by CBS NewsWhat do we know about his family?
Mr. Mangione comes from a prominent Baltimore-area family known for its businesses including country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station, according to local media.
The suspect's paternal grandparents, Nicholas and Mary Mangione, were real estate developers who purchased Turf Valley Country Club in 1978 and Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley in 1986.
Shortly after the suspect was charged, Republican state Rep. Nino Mangione – believed to be Mangione's cousin – issued a statement saying the family was “shocked and devastated.”
“We offer our prayers to Brian Thompson’s family and ask people to pray for everyone involved,” the statement, signed on behalf of the Mangione family, said.
