Business leaders, health insurance company employees and law enforcement officials have reported facing threats and intimidation following the arrest this week of the man accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The brutal slaying on a New York City street a week ago, while widely condemned by political and business leaders, has nevertheless catapulted the masked gunman to cause célèbre status for some in the US who view the crime as a symbolic repudiation of the country’s healthcare system. .
The suspect’s attorney, Luigi Mangione, 26, an Ivy League graduate, has said Mangione plans to plead not guilty to all charges.
Authorities fear the shooting could lead to copycat attacks.
Social media on Wednesday showed images of “wanted” posters put up in Manhattan with photos of the CEOs of at least two health insurers. The posters accuse the executives of “denying medical care for corporate profits.”
The posters, many of which have been removed, included the terms ‘Deny’, ‘Defend’, ‘Depose’ – words associated with the bullet casings found at the crime scene. The words have also been used on goods sold online that glorify the murder.
One of the companies mentioned in the posters declined to comment, while the other did not respond to a request.
It is unclear who was behind the stunt.
Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of Partnership for New York City, a city business advocacy group, said she heard about incidents over the weekend involving two CEOs — one receiving an anthrax threat and the other a package containing a so-called bomb . Those leaders are not in the medical industry, she added.
“In the business world they don’t want attention and they want to suppress it as much as possible,” says Wylde.
“It’s dangerous,” she added. “They don’t want to become the center of attention. No CEO wants to be at the center of this debate because they feel like it makes them a target.”
Rebecca Weiner, deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism for the New York Police Department, said Wednesday that Thompson’s killing appears to be a domestic terrorist attack and threatens to cause a “contagion.”
The murder “is already reflected in this outpouring of online vitriol that we have been in the midst of since last Wednesday and in the glorification of the alleged perpetrator of the murder as a hero,” Weiner said at an event in Washington, DC. for the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank.
“If we are concerned about terrorism, it is partly because of the disproportionate impact of a particular act of violence,” she added.
It’s not just the captains of industry who feel threatened.
A UnitedHealthcare employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his personal safety and the loss of his job said that company employees have received phone threats over the past week. Some came from members angry about their claims, others from people who wanted to express general grievances about the company.
The employee indicates that he is aware of a call threatening to blow up a UnitedHealthcare building and that a caller recently asked for details about the employee’s children.
“I had another person say, ‘This is why your CEO got shot, and if you’re not careful, you’re next,’” the employee said.
The company’s employees have a script for de-escalating calls and have been encouraged to take advantage of an employee assistance program that offers therapy, the employee added. But employees are “clearly exhausted, clearly overwhelmed and crying,” the employee said, and some had to step away from the phone to collect themselves.
“I hope people understand that the people they call and talk to are just as vulnerable to injustice as they are,” the employee said. “We are not elites. We’re not sitting here twiddling our thumbs and just deciding that you won’t be approved.”
Mangione was arrested Monday after a days-long, multi-state manhunt that ended after he was recognized at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. A customer alerted an employee, who informed authorities.
At a news conference, Gov. Josh Shapiro praised “our fellow Pennsylvanian who stepped up as a hero.”
But Altoona Deputy Police Chief Derek Swope told reporters Tuesday that threats followed the arrest in “a very polarized case.”
“We have received some threats against our officers and the building here. We have begun to investigate some threats against some citizens in our community,” Swope said. “We take all these threats seriously and are doing everything we can to respond to them.”
He did not say whether employees at the McDonald’s where Mangione was caught had been threatened. The restaurant has been flooded with negative reviews online, some referring to ‘rats in the kitchen’.
Mangione remains jailed in Pennsylvania as he fights extradition to New York, where he faces charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Two sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News that Mangione was found with a notebook next to a previously reported handwritten letter.
In the notebook, he allegedly wrote about wanting to attack a CEO at a conference with a gun and that such a method was preferable to other means – such as an explosive – so that others would not be harmed.
Thomas Dickey, Mangione’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the alleged notebook.
Wylde said she understands why some people harbor dissatisfaction with the way certain industries operate and that they need to be able to express those feelings. But the “violence, fear and mistrust that has been unleashed has had a chilling effect on cooperation or openness in working together,” she said.
“Violent behavior does not lead to constructive solutions,” she added. “It just plunges our society into even more conflict and paralysis.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
