Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was charged with murder on Monday after he was stopped at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pa.
The 26-year-old has been charged in Manhattan with second-degree murder, as well as two gun charges and forgery, online court documents show.
Mangione was traveling through Pennsylvania on a Greyhound bus on Monday and was recognized at a McDonald's. He was taken into custody by local police and had a firearm, fake I.D. and a handwritten manifesto that criticized healthcare companies.
The manifesto has not yet been released publicly, but law enforcement officials told The New York Times it criticized UnitedHealthcare for prioritizing profit over healthcare. Mangione in the document took responsibility for the killing and wrote that he acted alone.
“To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,” he wrote. He added that companies “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it,” officials told The Times.
A Baltimore, Md., native, Mangione comes from a wealthy upbringing and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Friends described him as “normal” and a “smart person,” the BBC reported.
He most recently lived in a co-living surf community in Honolulu, Hawaii., where he suffered from painful back issues that impacted his everyday life, sources told The Times. Mangione later returned to the East Coast to seek medical care. His online history and GoodReads account show that Mangione’s back injury and treatment attempts were a significant source of distress in his life.
One of his pinned quotes on Goodreads reads “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Mangione was in regular contact with his family and friends until six months ago, when he stopped communicating with them, The Times reported. His family released a statement through Mangione's cousin, who is a Maryland state delegate.
“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” Nino Mangione said in a written statement signed by The Mangione Family. “We offer prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”
Investigators are looking for additional evidence that links Mangione to the murder.
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