Luigi Mangione: What we know about UnitedHealthCare CEO shooting suspect

A profile is emerging of the 26-year-old man being held in connection with last week’s fatal shooting of United Healthcare’s chief executive in New York City.

Police announced on Monday they had arrested Luigi Mangione on firearms charges after he was recognised at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. 

The Baltimore, Maryland, native had a three-page handwritten document that mentioned grievances with the US healthcare system and indicated “motivation and mindset”, officials said.

Mr Mangione is so far facing weapon and fake ID charges in Pennsylvania, with murder charges from New York expected to be filed soon.

Here’s all that we’ve learned so far about the suspect.

Mr Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and has ties to San Francisco, California, according to New York Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.

He has no prior arrests in New York and his last previous address was in Honolulu, Hawaii, police said. 

He attended a private, all-boys high school in Baltimore, called the Gilman School, according to school officials. Mr Mangione was named as the valedictorian, which is usually the student with the highest academic achievements in a class.

A former classmate, Freddie Leatherbury, told the Associated Press news agency that Mr Mangione came from a wealthy family, even by that private school’s standards.

“Quite honestly, he had everything going for him,” Mr Leatherbury said.

Mr Mangione is also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science, according to the school, and founded a video game development club. 

A friend who attended the Ivy League college at the same time as Mr Mangione described him as a “super normal” and “smart person”.

Mr Mangione was employed as a data engineer for TrueCar, a digital retailing website for new and used cars, according to his social media profiles. A company spokesman told the BBC he had not worked there since 2023. 

According to the LinkedIn profile, Mr Mangione previously worked as a programming intern for Firaxis, a video game developer. 

He comes from a prominent family in the Baltimore area whose businesses include a country club and nursing homes, according to local media. 

He is reportedly the cousin of Republican state lawmaker Nino Mangione.

Mr Mangione was taken into custody at a McDonald’s after a customer informed an employee, who tipped off authorities.

At the time, he was in possession of a 3D-printed black pistol, a 3D-printed silencer and a loaded magazine with six rounds of 9mm ammunition.

Police said he was carrying several IDs, including one with his real identity and another that was fake. 

These IDs included a US passport and a fraudulent New Jersey ID that was used to check into the New York City hostel, where the suspect was seen before the shooting. 

When he was told he would be arrested if he had lied about his name, he admitted he was Luigi Mangione. 

He “became quiet and started to shake” when asked if he had recently been to New York, according to the criminal complaint filed in Pennsylvania. 

Police say he was also found with three pages of handwritten documents in which he seemed to express “ill will towards corporate America”.

The document also said “These parasites had it coming” and “I do apologise for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done”, a senior law enforcement official told the New York Times.

What do his social media profiles tell us? 

Social media profiles provide some possible clues about Mr Mangione’s thinking. 

A person matching his name and photo had an account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review site, where he gave four stars to a text called Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski – also known as the Unabomber manifesto. 

Starting in 1978, Kaczynski carried out a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens of others, until he was arrested in 1996.

In his review, Mr Mangione wrote: “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless[ly] write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic.

“He 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.”