new York
Suspected murderer of healthcare CEO comes from a good family
The suspect who is said to have shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Thompson in a police car
© ASSOCIATED PRESS | Uncredited / Picture Alliance
A young man shoots the CEO of a major US health insurance company in front of a hotel in Manhattan. A few days later, a suspect was arrested in the US state of Pennsylvania. Who is the 26 year old?
A murder right in front of a hotel in the middle of New York, the victim is the CEO of the health insurer UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson. But who is the perpetrator, the masked young man who the police have been hunting for days and have now presumably accepted?
On Monday, police reported that a 26-year-old man was initially arrested for weapons possession. An employee recognized him at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. It later becomes clear that this is the person the police have been searching for since the murder in New York. “He is considered the person of interest in connection with the brazen, targeted murder of Brian Thompson,” New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference.
The police give the suspect's name as Luigi M. The 26-year-old comes from Baltimore in the US state of Maryland. According to Joseph Kenny, the head of the New York Criminal Investigation Department, he also has connections to San Francisco, California. The man's last address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Wealthy family, valedictorian of high school
He reportedly comes from a wealthy family and attended a private high school in Baltimore, where he graduated at the top of his class. A former classmate, Freddie Leatherbury, told The Associated Press that things were “very good” for the suspect. “He was a good person,” a former teacher told The Washington Post. “He was very intelligent, lively and full of life. “I'm deeply shocked because this just doesn't fit with the boy I knew all those years ago.”
The alleged perpetrator then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where, according to the university, he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and founded a video game development club. He then worked, among other things, as an intern for a video game developer and as a data engineer for a car trading website. However, as of 2023 it is unclear whether and where he worked.
So far, the man's police file is blank. However, the police found a so-called ghost gun on M., a firearm whose traceability is largely impossible. The weapon was made using a 3D printer and included a silencer and a loaded magazine with six rounds of 9mm ammunition. Police said he was carrying several forms of identification, including a U.S. passport and a fake New Jersey ID that was used to check into the New York hostel where the suspect was seen before the shooting.
Written manifesto against business
He also had a three-page handwritten document with him that showed his “motivation and state of mind,” officials said. According to police, he expressed his “ill will toward the American economy.” The document states: “These parasites deserve it” and “I apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done,” a senior police official told the New York Times.
This apparently confirms suspicions that the murder is related to Thompson's activity. According to the BBC, the suspect had social media profiles in which, among other things, he gave four stars to the manifesto of Una bomber Theodore Kaczynski. He justified his reading recommendation on Goodreads by saying that he reads Kaczynski's book as that of an “extreme political revolutionary”. A social media account associated with him posted on topics ranging from artificial intelligence to the societal impact of social media use.
The man's family said in a statement on X that they were “shocked and devastated” by the arrest. According to investigations by US media, the alleged perpetrator has lost contact with family and friends in the past few months.
Meanwhile, the Manhattan district attorney's office expanded the charges against the 26-year-old to include first-degree murder, three counts of felony firearm use and forgery. Authorities had previously said they expected murder charges to be filed in New York in the next few days.
The article first appeared on ntv.de. Like Capital, the news portal belongs to RTL Deutschland.
