The weapon found at suspect in CEO murder from UnitedHealthcare matched bullet casings found at the scene of the shooting, New York City’s police commissioner said Wednesday.
Suspect Luigi Mangione’s fingerprints also match a water bottle and a sandwich wrapper that police found near the scene in midtown Manhattan, Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at an unrelated news conference. Police had previously said they believed the gunman purchased the items at a nearby coffee shop while waiting for his target.
Mangione, 26, was charged with murder in the shooting last week of Brian Thompson, who ran the largest health insurance company in the United States.
Authorities have said the writings found in Mangione’s possession suggested a hatred of corporate greed.
They have recovered a spiral notebook that Mangione kept, along with a three-page handwritten letter found when he was arrested Monday in Pennsylvania, a law enforcement official said Wednesday. Police have not revealed the contents of the notebook.
The letter hinted at the possibility that clues about the attack — “some scattered notes and to-do lists that illuminate the essence of it” — could be found in the notebook, the law enforcement official said. The officer was not authorized to release information about the investigation and spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The NYPD’s top detective, Joseph Kenny, told C.B.S. Tuesday that the reason could have been related to an accident that sent Mangione to an emergency room on July 4, 2023.
A bulletin obtained by the AP earlier this week said the letter disparaged corporate greed and what Mangione called “parasitic” health insurance companies. The graduate of prestigious schools wrote that the United States has the most expensive health care system in the world and that the profits of large corporations continue to increase while life expectancy does not, according to the newsletter.
In his first public words since his arrest, Mangione shouted about an “insult to the intelligence of the American people” on the way to court Tuesday. Mangione remained jailed without bail Wednesday in Pennsylvania, where he was initially charged with weapons and forgery offenses.
Manhattan prosecutors were working to bring him to New York. At a brief hearing Tuesday in Pennsylvania, defense attorney Thomas Dickey said Mangione will not waive extradition and instead wants a hearing on the matter.
“You can’t rush a judgment in this case or any case,” Dickey said afterward. “His innocence is presumed. Let’s not forget that.”
Mangione was arrested in Altoona, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of New York City, after a McDonald’s customer recognized him and notified an employee, authorities said.
NYPD officials have said Mangione was carrying a gun like the one used to kill Thompson and the same fake ID the suspected shooter had used to check into a New York hostel, along with a passport and other identification. fraudulent.
Thompson, 50, was killed Dec. 4 while walking alone to a Manhattan hotel for an investor conference. Based on surveillance video, New York investigators determined that the shooter quickly fled the city, probably by bus.
His subsequent movements are unclear, but authorities believe he took steps to stay under the radar. Prosecutors said at his hearing in Pennsylvania this week that when he was arrested, he had bags for his cellphone and laptop that prevent such devices from transmitting signals that authorities can use to track them.
Mangione, the grandson of a well-known Maryland real estate developer and philanthropist, had a graduate degree in computer science and worked for a time at a car-buying website. During the first half of 2022, he stayed in a “co-living” space in Hawaii, where those who knew him said he suffered from severe and sometimes debilitating back pain.
His relatives have said in a statement that they are “shocked and devastated” by his arrest.
Patient outrage
Healthcare companies are stepping back to better understand patient experiences after assassination of powerful health insurance executive.
The killing ignited a groundswell of anger from Americans struggling to receive and pay for health care.
“Our healthcare system needs to be better… There are a lot of things that should cause a lot of outrage,” said Amazon Pharmacy Chief Medical Officer Vin Gupta. “It is also true that that (murder) should not have happened. There cannot be this false moral equivalence in our discourse.”
The New York Times said an internal New York City Police report analyzing the document concluded that Mangione saw the murder as a justified response to what he believed was corruption in the healthcare industry.
[Con información de Reuters y AP]
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