New York:

Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally gunning down health insurance executive Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street, pleaded not guilty on Monday to New York state murder charges that brand him a terrorist.

Mangione, 26, was escorted into Judge Gregory Carro’s 13th-floor courtroom in the New York state criminal courthouse in lower Manhattan with a court officer on each arm, and a procession of a half dozen officers following him. He was in handcuffs and shackles, and wore a burgundy sweater over a white-collared shirt.

Luigi Mangione leaned into a microphone and said “not guilty” when Carro asked how he pleaded to the 11-count indictment charging him with murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses.

If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance unit UnitedHealthcare, was shot dead on Dec. 4 outside a hotel in midtown Manhattan where the company was gathering for an investor conference.

The brazen killing and ensuing five-day manhunt captivated Americans. While public officials have condemned the killing, some Americans who decry the steep costs of healthcare and insurance companies’ power to deny paying for some medical treatments have feted Mangione as a folk hero.

Luigi Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9. After deciding last week not to fight extradition, he was transferred to New York, where he was led off a helicopter in lower Manhattan by a large phalanx of police officers and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

That spectacle and other statements by public officials suggest Mangione may not be able to get a fair trial, his lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said at Monday’s hearing.

“They are treating him like he is some sort of political fodder, some sort of spectacle,” Agnifilo said. “He is not a symbol, he is someone who is afforded a right to a fair trial.”

Several dozen people gathered outside the courthouse in freezing temperatures to express support for Mangione and anger at healthcare companies.

One person held a sign with the words “DENY, DEFEND, DEPOSE,” a phrase that echoes tactics some accuse insurers of using to avoid paying out claims. Authorities say the words “deny,” “delay,” and “depose” were found written on shell casings at the crime scene.

Kara Hay, a 42-year-old schoolteacher, said she believed it was wrong for Mangione to be charged with terrorism.

“Shooting one CEO does not make him a terrorist, and I do not feel terrorized,” said Hay, who held a sign reading “innocent until proven guilty.”

After the 30-minute hearing, officers once again shackled Mangione and led him out of the courtroom. He is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal lockup in Brooklyn.

Carro set Mangione’s next court appearance for Feb. 21.

DUAL STATE, FEDERAL CASES

Monday’s arraignment was the second court appearance in New York for Mangione, who also faces a four-count federal criminal complaint charging him with stalking and killing Thompson.

He has not yet been asked to enter a plea in that case. U.S. Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker ordered Mangione detained at a Dec. 19 hearing in Manhattan federal court.

The federal charges would make him eligible for the death penalty, should the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan decide to pursue it.

The separate federal and state cases will proceed in parallel. The state case is currently expected to go to trial first, federal prosecutors said.

At the hearing, Friedman Agnifilo said it was difficult to defend her client in dual state and federal cases.

“He is being treated like a human ping-pong ball between these two jurisdictions,” Friedman Agnifilo said.

She also said the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which brought the charges, has not handed over any evidence to the defense to help prepare for trial, a process known as discovery. A prosecutor responded that the office would begin handing over evidence soon.

According to the federal criminal complaint, the police who arrested Mangione found a notebook that contained several handwritten pages that “express hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular.”

A notebook entry dated Oct. 22 allegedly described an intent to “wack” the chief executive of an insurance company at its investor conference.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New York, United States:

US authorities on Tuesday charged the man suspected of gunning down a health insurance CEO in New York earlier this month with murder, including a charge of second-degree murder “as an act of terrorism.”

Mangione, 26, is accused of shooting UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street on December 4, triggering a nationwide manhunt that ended last week when he was spotted at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s.

The former data engineer remains jailed in that state as he fights efforts to extradite him to New York to face charges there over the killing, which brought into focus widespread public anger against the US health care system.

Mangione “is charged with one count of murder in the first degree and two counts of murder in the second degree, including one count of murder in the second degree as an act of terrorism,” said Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.

Bragg said the terrorism charge was included because the shooting met the prerequisites for such a determination under New York law.

“In its most basic terms, this was a killing that was intended to evoke terror and we’ve seen that reaction,” he said. “This was not an ordinary killing.”

The maximum penalty for the murder charges Mangione faces is life in prison without parole, Bragg said.

The suspect was also charged with several crimes related to his possession of a weapon, which authorities said was a 3D-printed “ghost gun.”

“We allege he… took out a nine-millimeter 3D-printed ghost gun equipped with a 3D-printed suppressor and shot (Thompson) once in the back and once in the leg,” said Bragg.

“These weapons are increasingly proliferating throughout New York City and the entire country. Evolving technology will only make this problem worse,” he said.

“Last year, over 80 ghost guns and ghost gun parts were recovered in Manhattan alone.”

‘Shocking and appalling’

In the wake of Thompson’s killing, many social media users have lionized Mangione, with some even calling for further killings of other CEOs.

Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, criticized members of the public who had praised the murder.

“In the nearly two weeks since Mr Thompson’s killing, we have seen a shocking and appalling celebration of cold-blooded murder,” said Tisch.

Mangione is due in Pennsylvania court on Thursday for a hearing on his extradition to New York.

Police say a “life-changing, life-altering” back injury may have motivated Mangione, although they added that there was “no indication” that he was ever a client of UnitedHealthcare.

When he was arrested, Mangione had a three-page handwritten text criticizing the US health care system.

Police have said that Mangione’s fingerprints matched those found near the crime scene, and that shell casings match the gun found on him when he was arrested.

Bragg said that the suspect traveled to New York on November 24 with the intention of murdering Thompson.

On December 4, he is alleged to have waited “for nearly an hour” outside the hotel where Thompson was shot early that morning.

“This was a frightening, well planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” said district attorney Bragg.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Not long after an election that polarised the nation and threw up Donald Trump as the winner, civil society in the U.S. stands divided yet again over a man: 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who allegedly shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a hotel in Manhattan on December 4.

Mangione was picked up from a McDonald’s outlet in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on December 9 when a member of the restaurant staff spotted and identified him.

Also read: Back trouble and brain fog bothered suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing, his posts show

From ridiculing the employee and McDonalds to lionising Mangione as an “anti-capitalist” hero and describing his act as “vigilante justice”, social media was awash with reactions that has largely glorified the killing of the 50-year-old and father of two.

So much so that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro felt compelled to spell out the morality involved in the situation: “Hear me on this: He is no hero. The real hero in this story is the person who called 911 at McDonald’s this morning.” “We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” Mr. Shapiro said.

That it took a Governor’s statement for people to see through a crime that happened in broad daylight is a telling sign. Regardless, observers and columnists attribute the sympathy pouring in for Mangione to the hatred reserved by the public for insurance companies.

Among other evidence recovered from the crime scene were bullet casings that had the words ‘Deny’, ‘Defend’ and ‘Depose’ written on them — a play on the phrase ‘Delay, Deny, Defend’, apparent tactics used by insurance firms to refuse claims. Also found in Mangione’s possession was a hand-written manifesto that criticised American companies’ corporate greed. “Frankly these parasites simply had it coming,” the note stated. UnitedHealthcare, however, has said Mangione was not its customer.

As police try and figure out if Mangione, who had a back problem and did correction procedure, acted out of self-interest or handed out “vigilante justice”, public support has swelled. His X account grew by more than 4,00,000 followers since the shooting, close to $31,000 was raised on GiveSendGo and “#FreeLuigi“ and “hot assassin” tags spread on social media — with engagement levels crossing what was witnessed during Donald Trump’s assassination attempt.

In Mangione, people found a “folk hero” who stood up for them against an industry that has long become a target of public ire. With an estimated market valuation of $560 billion, UnitedHealth, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, ranks 19th on Forbes’ list of the world’s biggest companies. However, look past the insurance firm to see that the individuals involved are mired in a strange paradox.

According to a Reuters report, Thompson had a modest working-class upbringing in rural Iowa. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Iowa in 1997. He is a certified public accountant and worked for six years at the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) before joining the United Group in 2004 as Director of Corporate Development, according to Forbes.

This is in stark contrast to the privileged upbringing of Mangione, someone believed to have carried out an “anti-capitalist” attack. Born into a prominent real-estate family in Baltimore, Mangione received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania with an interest in computer science. He also served as head counsellor at a pre-college programme at Standford. The tuition fee at the high school he attended stands at $37,690 this year. He worked as a software engineer at TrueCar, an online marketplace based in California. For a brief while, he stayed at a co-living space in Honolulu, Hawaii, for $2,000 per month.

Six months ago, he fell off the public radar with his mother filing a missing complaint in November.

Investigators are scouring his social media accounts for further clues and a concrete motive. Save for a goodreads account where he posted a review commending the “prescient” nature of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s Industrial Society and its future, Mangione’s political standing can only be described as heterodox at best.

The fact that Mangione’s motive and ideology have not been deciphered so far is worrisome for it then leaves only one plausible explanation. Much like the 2021 Capitol attack, it shows the public’s eroding trust in institutions. A fallout of that is the common man disregarding civic sense and becoming emboldened to take the law into his own hands. Mangione, who spoke about a “symbolic takedown” in his manifesto, then becomes a hero for those disenchanted with the system.

Luigi Mangione, who was arrested for allegedly killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was never a client of the medical insurance company, a New York Police Department (NYPD) official said. According to the police, the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate may have killed the CEO due to the “size and influence” of the company, reported NBC.

Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said that Mangione was aware of the company holding its annual investor conference at a Manhattan hotel on December 4 – the day of the crime.

“We have no indication that he was ever a client of United Healthcare, but he does mention that it is the fifth largest corporation in the US, which would make it the largest healthcare organisation in the country. So that’s possibly why he targeted the company…He had prior knowledge that the conference was taking place on that date, at that location,” Kenny told NBC.

Mangione shot the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4 and was since then on the run. The University of Pennsylvania grad led the police on a five-day manhunt, following which he was arrested from a McDonalds in Pennsylvania. He is currently in custody and is facing multiple charges, including murder. Mangione was denied bail at an extradition hearing at the Blair County Courthouse in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

The suspect was reportedly arrested with a manifesto where he accused health insurance companies of putting corporate greed over the well-being of people – which led to theories that he may have killed the CEO over disappointment with the insurance provider. The police also reportedly found some of Mangione’s writings about wanting to use a gun to target a CEO of a big corporation.

The NYPD found a 3D-printed gun from Mangione – which matched three shell casings found at the crime scene. The 9mm shell casings reportedly had the words “delay”, “deny” and “depose” written across them on each bullet – which were the title of a book criticising the insurance industry.

The negative comments aimed at McDonald’s were the latest in what is known as “review bombing” [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Google on Monday removed derogatory reviews about McDonald’s after the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson was arrested at its restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where police say a customer alerted a local employee about him.

The negative comments aimed at McDonald’s were the latest in what is known as “review bombing,” where an establishment is hit with a litany of bad reviews based on a political view or an occurrence unrelated to its actual business.

In this case, the negative and one-star reviews showed up after Luigi Mangione, 26, was captured at a McDonald’s in Altoona. He was spotted eating at the restaurant by a customer who alerted a McDonald’s employee, state police said.

“These reviews violate our policies and have been removed,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The policy says that review contributions “should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business” and that “content that has been posted from multiple accounts to manipulate a place’s rating” will be removed.

“This location has rats in the kitchen that will make you sick and your insurance isn’t going to cover it,” one review said.

The insurance executive’s murder unleashed a wave of frustration from Americans who have seen their health insurance claims or care denied, faced unexpected costs or paid more for premiums and medical care – all trends that are rising, according to recent data.

Thompson, 50, was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel early on Wednesday morning by a masked man who appeared to wait for his arrival before shooting the executive from behind.

The suspect ran from the scene and then rode a bike into Central Park. Surveillance video captured him exiting the park and taking a taxi to a bus station in northern Manhattan, where police believe he got on a bus to flee the city. Police said Thompson appeared to be deliberately targeted.

The suspect was arrested after a five-day manhunt.