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The 26 year old scion of a prominent Maryland family who came top of his class at an elite private school before graduating on from an Ivy League college, Luigi Mangione seemed to have everything going for him. According to police Mangione has no prior arrest history in New York or elsewhere in the country and may have attended College in Pennsylvania.
Mangione graduated from the university of Pennsylvania with bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer and information science after attending Gilman school for high school. According to a LinkedIn page suspected to belong to Mangione describes internship at the Johns Hopkins laboratory for computational sensing and robotics and fir axis games before going on to work as an engineer for TrueCar where he'd been employed for several years. Mangione also worked as a counselor in the Stanford pre collegiate studies in program in 2019.
According to police Mangione is the masked gunman who took out a pistol equipped with a suppressor on a midtown Manhattan Street and assassinated Brian Thompson, the chief executive of United Health Care. According to law enforcement bulletin seen by U.S. media, Mr. Mangione was allegedly motivated by resentment of what he called “parasitic” health insurance companies.
He was arrested five days after the attack at the McDonald’s in Atlanta, Pennsylvania and was allegedly in possession of guns, bullets, multiple fake IDs and cash. He was charged with forgery, carrying firearms without license, tampering with records or identification, processing instruments of crime and providing a false identification to police.
Mr. Mangione comes from a prominent family in the Baltimore area who are known for businesses including country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station according to local media. According to police Mangione also had a handwritten document that expressed “ill will” towards corporate America and included passages such as “frankly these parasites had it coming.” Investigators said the words “deny”, “defend” and “dispose” were written on shell casings found at the scene of Mr. Thompson’s murder.
Before an extradition hearing in Pennsylvania, Mangione struggled with police officers as they led him towards the courthouse entrance and shouted at reporters. “That’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people,” he said, though it was not clear what he was referring to.
His lawyers told the court that he would contest his extradition to New York to face trial on the murder charge. Shortly after Mangione was charged, his cousin republican state lawmaker Nino Mangione released a statement claiming the family was “shocked” and “devastated.” “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved,” the statement read.
A former roommate, DJ Martin told the BBC that while Mangione never complained, his back pains at times prohibited him from doing normal things such as surfing or playing volleyball. Mr. Martin who eventually lost contact with Mangione believed his former friend “would have never conceived of hurting someone else.” He added, “There’s no making sense of it.” Mangione’s mother reported him missing in November to San Francisco authorities telling them she had not heard from her son since July.
After the police started searching for the shooting suspect in Thompson’s murder, the missing persons report his mother filed was flagged to authorities, New York Police department chief of detectives Joseph Kenney told reporters. Mangione’s mother was contacted regarding the case but said “it might be something that she could he doing.”
