Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Friday he was aware of information suggesting that Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, would not contest his extradition from Pennsylvania to New York.
“It would appear that the defendant may waive, but that waiver will not be complete until after a court proceeding,” Bragg said at an unrelated news conference in Times Square.
“Until then, we will continue to move forward on parallel tracks, and we will be ready if he waives extradition or if he contests extradition.”
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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office charged Mangione with second-degree murder and weapons possession. (PA)
In a criminal complaint filed Monday, Bragg’s office charged Mangione, 26, with second-degree murder, three weapons possession offenses and criminal possession of a forged instrument for the early morning killing Dec. 4 outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown.
Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday began presenting evidence to a grand jury seeking an indictment in the high-profile killing, according to ABC. The prosecutor’s office declined to comment on or confirm the report.
Mangione has been in custody in Pennsylvania since his arrest Monday and was denied bail. Bragg and Gov. Hochul’s office said they are coordinating to submit an extradition request to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office.
Earlier this week, his lawyer, Thomas Dickey, indicated that he would contest his extradition to New York. He could not be reached Friday for comment on Bragg’s comments. Mangione is next scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 23, according to Pennsylvania court administrators.
PA Department of Corrections, Altoona Police Department/Getty
Luigi Mangione in police custody in Pennsylvania. (PA Department of Corrections, Altoona Police Department/Getty)
Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, was arriving for UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor conference when he was shot to death in the street, according to surveillance footage. The suspect fled the scene on a bicycle and, police say, was on his way out of town within 45 minutes, leading to a five-day manhunt.
Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s more than 200 miles away in Altoona after someone at the fast-food restaurant recognized him from widely distributed still images taken from footage related to New York’s killing. York.
According to Pennsylvania law enforcement and the NYPD, he was in possession of a 3D-printed ghost gun, a silencer, and bullets matching those recovered at the scene – which bore the words “retard,” deny” and “defend”. an apparent reference to the insurance industry routinely delaying claims to maximize profits – as well as fake IDs.
He is accused in Pennsylvania of carrying a firearm without a license, forgery and presenting a false ID to the cops. Blair County Prosecutor Peter Weeks said he would not seek to prosecute Mangione on those charges until he is tried in New York.
When he was arrested, Mangione was also in possession of a note of approximately 260 words appearing to outline the motive for his alleged shooting of Thompson, according to the New York Police Department.
In it, he wrote that the United States had the most expensive health care system in the world, but ranked 42nd in life expectancy. He wrote that insurers had “simply become too powerful” and continued to “abuse our country for immense profits because the American public [allowed] that they get through it without any problem.
“Frankly, these parasites simply had it planned,” Mangione wrote, police allege.
On Wednesday, New York police said Mangione’s fingerprints were found on a water bottle and a KIND bar wrapper near the scene. They said they were also testing bullets found in a bag near where a backpack allegedly belonged to Mangione in Central Park.
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Brian Thompson was arriving at UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor conference when he was shot to death in the street. (PA)
The Ivy League graduate comes from a well-known Baltimore, Maryland family that owns real estate including a network of retirement homes and country clubs. His last known address was in Hawaii, according to cops.
According to his LinkedIn pagehe earned master’s and bachelor’s degrees in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, and he served as chief advisor to a Stanford University program that taught artificial intelligence to gifted high school students. After college, he worked as a data engineer for TrueCar in San Francisco.
Authorities say Mangione was not a client of UnitedHealthcare, but they are investigating his experiences with the industry to find potential motivations. The founder of a co-living space in Honolulu where Mangione lived for six months, RJ Martin, told the New York Times this week that he suffered from a spinal misalignment. Mangione posted on Reddit and other forums about the persistent pain he experienced that led to spinal fusion surgery. Her cover photo on X appears to show an x-ray taken after undergoing the procedure.
