Luigi Mangione: What we know about the suspect in CEO’s firing

A profile is emerging of the 26-year-old man charged with murder in last week’s fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare in New York City.

Police announced Monday that they have arrested Luigi Mangione on firearms charges after he was identified at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

The Baltimore, Maryland native was found in possession of a so-called ghost gun, a largely untraceable firearm and a three-page handwritten document indicating his “motivation and mindset,” authorities said.

Just hours after his arrest, Mr. Mangione was Charged with murder by New York investigators And four other counts.

Here’s everything we’ve learned so far about the suspect.

According to New York Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenney, Mr. Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and has ties to San Francisco, California.

Police said he had no previous arrests in New York and his previous known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.

According to school officials, he attended a private, all-boys high school in Baltimore called the Gilman School. Mr. Mangione was named valedictorian, which is usually the student with the highest academic achievements in a class.

In a statement, the school described the situation as “extremely worrying”.

A former classmate, Freddy Leatherbury, told the Associated Press news agency that Mr. Mangione was from a wealthy family, even by the standards of that private school.

“To be honest, he had everything,” Mr Leatherbury said.

According to local media, Mr. Mangione comes from a prominent family in the Baltimore area, whose businesses include a country club and a nursing home.

Shortly after the suspect was charged, Republican state Assemblyman Nino Mangione – believed to be his cousin – released a statement saying the family was “shocked and devastated.”

“We pray for Brian Thompson’s family and we ask people to pray for everyone involved,” the statement said.

According to the school, Mr. Mangione is also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science, and founded a video game development club.

A friend, who attended the same Ivy League college as Mr. Mangione, described him as “super normal” and a “smart guy.”

According to his social media profiles, Mr. Mangione worked as a data engineer for TrueCar, a digital retailing website for new and used cars. A company spokesperson told the BBC that he had not worked there since 2023.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Mangione previously worked as a programming intern for Firaxis, a video game developer.

Mr Mangione was taken into custody at McDonald’s after a customer alerted an employee, who then alerted authorities.

At the time, he had a Black Ghost gun – the kind that could be assembled at home using a 3D printer – with a silencer and a loaded magazine with six rounds of 9mm ammunition.

Police said he had multiple IDs, one of which was his real identity and the other was fake.

These IDs included an American passport and a fake New Jersey ID, which was used to check into a New York City hostel where the suspect was seen before the shooting.

When told he would be arrested if he lied about his name, he admitted he was Luigi Mangione.

When asked why he lied, he told officers, “I obviously shouldn’t have lied,” according to court documents.

According to the criminal complaint filed in Pennsylvania, he “went quiet and began to tremble” when asked if he had recently been to New York.

Police say they also found three pages of handwritten documents in which he appeared to express “malice toward corporate America.”

The document also states that “these parasites were causing this” and “I apologize for any upset and trauma, but it had to be done”, a senior law enforcement official told The New York Times.

Police said that although his arrest was “peaceful”, he has since stopped cooperating.

Social media profiles provide some possible clues about Mr. Mangione’s thinking.

A person matching his name and photo had an account on the user-generated book review site Goodreads, where he gave four stars to a text called Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski – also known as the Unabomber Manifesto. Is.

Starting in 1978, Kaczyński conducted a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens of others, until he was arrested in 1996.

In his review, Mr. Mangione wrote: “It would be easy to quickly and thoughtlessly write this off as a madman’s manifesto.

“He was a violent man – justifiably imprisoned – who maimed innocent people.

“Although these actions have been characterized as the actions of a lunatic Luddite, they are more accurately viewed as the actions of an extreme political revolutionary.”

His social media profiles also reveal that he has lost contact with family and friends in recent months.

In a post on X from October, someone tagged an account believed to be Mr. Mangione’s and wrote:

“Hey, are you okay? No one has heard from you in months and apparently your family is looking for you.”