Penn grad suspected in the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting is charged in Pa. with forgery and firearms offenses

The biggest break in last week’s fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson played out in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., on Monday, some 233 miles west of where the crime occurred in Midtown Manhattan.

The Altoona Police Department arrested Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate, on firearms charges after a McDonald’s employee sent a tip to local authorities about a suspicious masked man eating at the rear of the establishment. A patron had alerted the employee.

Mangione was arraigned at the Blair County Courthouse by Monday evening with forgery, carrying a firearm without a license, tampering with identification, possessing instruments of a crime, and presenting false identification to law enforcement. He was being held without bail and expected to be taken to a state correctional institution.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, joined by Pennsylvania State Police, local law enforcement, and New York police officials, said, “presumably, New York will file charges very, very soon.”

He reminded people that while they may have frustrations with the health-care system, Thompson was a husband and father. Shapiro condemned those who had been celebrating the killer and said killing someone “in cold blood” was no way to solve a policy difference.

“Violence can never be used to address political differences, or to address a substantive difference, or to try and prove some ideological point,” Shapiro said. “That is not what we do in a civilized society.”

Mangione was found in possession of multiple fraudulent identifications, including one believed to have been used by the suspect while in New York City, a U.S. passport, a three-page manifesto, and a ghost gun and suppressor, according to New York Police Department officials.

» READ MORE: Pennsylvania charges against Luigi Mangione: Read the complaint

Authorities described an escape that took Mangione through Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and eventually Altoona.

Authorities said the gun and silencer were consistent with the weapon used in the killing, as was the clothing recovered, including a mask. The gun, they said, appears to have been made on a 3D printer, capable of firing a 9mm round.

Police said forensic evidence and video were vital to the investigation, thanking the public and media for broadly sharing photos of the suspect.

“The images that we shared with the public were spread far and wide, and the tips we received led to the recovery of crucial evidence,” said New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “We should never underestimate the power of the public to be our eyes and our ears in these investigations.

NYPD officials said Mangione had yet to be charged in Thompson’s death but was expected to eventually be extradited to New York to face those charges.

The early morning killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO outside of a Hilton hotel where his employer’s annual investor conference was set to take place had stumped authorities and captivated the general public as details of the shooting felt something out of a thriller, painting the shooter as some sophisticated vigilante in the minds of some.

The shooter calmly walked and eventually biked away from the scene of the crime. Ammunition used in the killing had “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” written in permanent marker — a reference to tactics critics say insurers use to avoid paying claims. And police would later find a backpack believed to belong to the suspect in Central Park with Monopoly money inside.

For days, the NYPD combed through Central Park for additional clues. Their break came Monday, when an employee of the Altoona McDonald’s tipped off authorities to a man who resembled the one in wanted posters and sought by the New York Police Department and the FBI.

Mangione was working on a silver laptop computer when Altoona Police arrived and asked him to pull down his medical mask, according to the criminal complaint. He initially gave police a New Jersey license for a “Mark Rosario,” which was identified by police as a forgery and resulted in his apprehension.

According to the complaint, when asked whether he had been to New York recently, the suspect began to shake.

When police asked Magione why he lied about his identity, he said, “I clearly shouldn’t have.”

When Altoona police confronted the man, they found a manifesto railing against health-care company practices.

Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives at the NYPD, said he didn’t think there were “specific threats to other people mentioned in that document, but it does seem that he has some ill will towards corporate America.”

He said Mangione was raised in Maryland and has ties to San Francisco, with his last known residence in Honolulu, Hawaii. According to the NYPD, Mangione did not have a known criminal record and his only tie to Pennsylvania is that he went to school there.

A University of Pennsylvania spokesperson confirmed that Mangione received a bachelor’s degree in engineering in May 2020, with a major in computer science and a minor in mathematics, as well as a master’s in engineering, with a major in computer and information science, on the same date.

» READ MORE: Who is Luigi Mangione, the ex-Penn student detained as a person of interest in the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting?

Last week’s shooting caught global attention for its brazen nature and what would appear to be the suspect’s taunting of local police.

The shooter waited for Thompson around 6:45 a.m., fleeing on bike into Central Park. By 7:30 a.m., authorities believe the shooter made it to the George Washington Bridge Bus Station, which offers bus routes to Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, as well as commuter services to New Jersey.

Tisch called the shooting a “premeditated, preplanned, targeted attack.” Authorities believe the gunman arrived in the city 10 days before the shooting, staying at a hostel with a fake ID and paying in cash for his stay.

New York City police believe the gunman left the city by bus and had released various images of the suspected shooter.

Police are continuing to investigate and will work to backtrack Mangione’s path from New York to Pennsylvania, Kenny said.

”We’re not stopping today,” Kenny said.

A spokesperson for UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of United HealthCare, said in a statement that the company hoped the arrest brought some relief to Thompson’s family, friends, and colleagues, adding that they continued to work with law enforcement as they continued with their investigation.