Police Arrest UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Suspect, App Developer Luigi Mangione

Authorities arrested a man in Pennsylvania on Monday who police say is connected to the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last week.

Police apprehended Luigi Mangione, 26, in Altoona five days after Thompson was shot in Midtown Manhattan in the early hours of Wednesday, December 4, setting off a manhunt for the shooter, whose identity remained unknown. Mangione was detained after he visited a McDonald’s location in Altoona, where other guests noticed his resemblance to images of the suspected shooter released by the New York Police Department and contacted authorities, according to The New York Times.

The NYPD did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Prior to Mangione’s arrest, NYPD investigators mapped the alleged shooter’s movements around New York City since late November, including his stay at a Manhattan hostel, where an image of the suspect was captured without a face mask. Police later found the suspect’s backpack in Central Park, where he fled following the shooting, according to the NYPD. Authorities reportedly believe he left New York City on a bus.

Online records show that Luigi Mangione is an app developer who graduated with bachelor’s and master’s of science in engineering degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2020. A GitHub account that appears to be Mangione’s and an Instagram account for the game development company AppRoarr Studios indicate that he is a cofounder there. AppRoarr did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

A LinkedIn account that appears to be Mangione’s lists his employer as TrueCar, an online used vehicle retailer, where he claims to have started work as a data engineer in November 2020. The company confirmed his previous employment but told The New York Times that he has not worked at TrueCar since 2023. The company did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

At the scene of Thompson’s shooting outside the New York Hilton Midtown, NYPD investigators discovered bullet casings bearing the words “delay,” “depose,” and “deny,” likely references to the ways in which health insurance companies refuse to cover customers’ medical claims. According to the Times, authorities say Mangione was carrying a “manifesto” that included passages “criticizing health care companies for putting profits above care.”

UnitedHealthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. In a statement provided to other media outlets, a company spokesperson said: “Our hope is that today’s apprehension brings some relief to Brian’s family, friends, colleagues and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy. We thank law enforcement and will continue to work with them on this investigation. We ask that everyone respect the family’s privacy as they mourn.”

A search of Mangione’s online footprint paints a picture of a typical twentysomething, including accounts on Pinterest, Skype, Instagram, and Facebook. On X, what appears to be his account featured an image of what looks to be an X-ray following major spinal cord surgery, one of the few explicit references to health care in his online account history.

A GoodReads account featuring a photo of the suspect that also shares a username with an email address and GitHub account linked to Mangione includes several books related to back pain, including Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery. Other titles include Hillbilly Elegy, by US vice president-elect JD Vance, and “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the anti-technology diatribe colloquially known as the Unabomber Manifesto. The GoodReads account has since been set to private.

Mangione, who was valedictorian of his private high school in the Baltimore area, appears to have been an avid gamer, with dozens of game titles listed on an Xbox Live account that shares his name. In 2018, Mangione described himself as passionate about making video games, and helped to found a game development club at Penn that was quickly joined by roughly 60 students, according to a since-deleted article on the university’s news hub.

On a GitHub page believed to belong to Mangione, he shared code repositories that focused on machine learning and human-computer interaction. Among these is a project titled "Meccanoid-Imitate,” which apparently uses Arduino—an open source and easy-to-use electronics platform—and a programmable Meccanoid robot. The repository, last updated four years ago, includes animated GIFs showing Mangione in what appears to be a classroom, moving his arms while a Meccanoid robot behind him mimics his gestures.

Updated at 5:30 pm EST, December 9, 2024, to include additional information about Mangione’s employment history.