Manhattan prosecutors have charged 26-year-old Luigi Mangione with murder in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown last week, according to the district attorney’s office.
The charges come less than a day after Mangione was spotted by an employee while eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles west of New York City. Local police took him in for questioning and found a black 3D-printed pistol, which the NYPD said was similar to the one used to shoot Thompson, as well as a black 3D-printed silencer and multiple fake IDs, according to a criminal complaint filed in Pennsylvania court.
When officers asked Mangione if he’d been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake,” the complaint states.
Magione was arrested in Altoona on unlicensed gun possession and forgery charges, and a judge ordered him held without bail on Monday night.
The charges Mangione faces in New York are on top of the charges he faces in Pennsylvania. The timeline of Mangione’s extradition to New York depends on whether the Pennsylvania judge decides to hold an extradition hearing or not, according to the DA’s office. Any hearing would draw out the process of Mangione being brought to Manhattan court.
Manhattan prosecutors have also charged Mangione with three counts of illegal gun possession and one count of possession of a forged instrument, a spokesperson for DA Alvin Bragg said. The murder charge is for murder in the second degree, which means the defendant allegedly had the intent to kill.
Information for Mangione’s lawyer was not immediately available on Tuesday morning.
Magione expressed an “ill will toward corporate America” in a purported manifesto police said detailed his alleged motives in the fatal shooting. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, the school confirmed, and he reportedly attended an all-boys private high school in Baltimore before then.
NYPD officials said on Monday that Mangione had ties to San Francisco and recently lived in Honolulu. They said he had no prior arrest history in New York.
Police are continuing to investigate the case.
This is a developing story and may be updated.