Police have arrested a person of interest in last week’s shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and new details are emerging about a potential motive behind the assassination.
Pennsylvania police arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday after receiving reports of a man who was “acting suspiciously.” New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a press conference that Mangione “was carrying multiple fraudulent IDs, as well as a U.S. passport [and] a firearm on his person, as well as a suppressor, both consistent with the weapon used in the murder.”
Altoona police recovered a “handwritten document that speaks to both his motivation and mindset,” Tisch added. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny added in the same press conference that the manifesto suggests Mangione “has some ill will toward corporate America.”
Kenny added that the manifesto was a “handwritten, three-page document” and that the “complete details” were not yet available. “We don’t think there’s any specific threats to other people mentioned in that document,” he said.
One law enforcement official who had seen the document recalled to CNN that the suspect wrote “these parasites had it coming” and “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.” According to a law enforcement official who spoke to The New York Times, the document criticized health care companies for putting profit above care for patients.
Since his identification, multiple social media profiles suspected of belonging to Mangione have been identified. A Goodreads profile that appears to belong to Mangione indicates that he may have been struggling with chronic back pain, and left a positive review of Unibomber John Kaczynski’s manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future.
Kaczynski “was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary,” the user, listed as Luigi Mangione, wrote.
Later in the review, the user quoted a portion of another analysis they’d read of Kaczynski’s work and actions. “A take I found online that I think is interesting: […] ‘When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution. […]These companies don’t care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?’”
The profile also liked a quote from American author Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five: “America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves […] This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times.”