Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested and charged Monday in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, capping a days-long manhunt for a person involved in the shooting.
Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a McDonald’s employee recognized him in photos released by the New York Police Department and called authorities. He was charged with two felonies and three felonies in Pennsylvania, and New York prosecutors later filed a murder charge against him, as well as additional charges of forgery and illegal gun possession.
Mangione comes from a wealthy, prominent Baltimore real estate family that owned country clubs, radio stations and nursing homes in the area, The Baltimore Banner reported. He was well-liked by friends and former classmates, who expressed shock at his arrest.
In a statement released Monday evening through his cousin Nino Mangione, a Maryland state representative, the family said they were “shocked and devastated” by his arrest, and “sent prayers to the family of Brian Thompson,” but declined further to comment.
Throughout his life, Mangione attended elite schools, where he excelled. He attended the Gilman School, a private all-boys institution, where he farewelled his graduating class in 2016. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 with a bachelor’s and master’s degree. He was a member of UPenn’s chapter of Eta Kappa Nu, an honor society for top students in electrical and computer engineering. Mangione also served as a lead advisor at a pre-collegiate program at Stanford University in the summer of 2019.
Mangione was an avid gamer. According to The New York Times, in a now-deleted interview published on UPenn’s campus events blog in 2018, Mangione said he taught himself to code in high school so he could create computer games. That’s why he chose computer science as his major, he said.
According to his LinkedIn, he founded UPenn’s first video game development club. On the platform he also mentions four years of employment as a data engineer at TrueCar, an online marketplace for new and used cars.
Police said that when they arrested Mangione, he was carrying a ghost gun, which can be assembled from parts purchased online and can be extremely difficult to trace. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said the weapon “may have been made with a 3D printer.”
As police and the media continue to dig into Mangione’s background, authorities are still working to identify a motive for Thompson’s shooting.
Mangione’s extensive online trail may offer some clues about his thinking and state of mind. He was active on Goodreads, a website where users share reviews and rate books they have read. Mangione had a painful back condition that he struggled with, his friends told The Wall Street Journal, and his Goodreads account features several books on dealing with back pain.
One of the more closely researched reviews on Mangione’s Goodreads account was about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s anti-technology manifesto. Mangione called Kaczynski’s actions “those of an extreme political revolutionary” and quoted a statement he said he saw online:
When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary for survival. You may not like his methods, but if you look at things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution. … These companies don’t care about you, or your children, or your grandchildren. They have no qualms about burning the planet down for a few dollars, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?
This is a development story. Check back for updates.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
