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McDonald’s is having quite a public relations rollercoaster of a year, isn’t it? First, it became a focal point of the 2024 presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris, while on the campaign trail, continuously claimed she worked there as a young woman — something she was never quite able to prove. Then President-elect Donald Trump worked the drive-thru at a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania for a day in October. After the election, Trump and his buddies, including Elon Musk and health nut Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., were photographed on a plane enjoying a meal of Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, and fries together. There was also the whole onion recall announced this fall, one of the biggest in the restaurant’s history, that led to 104 known cases of E. coli infections across 14 states. 

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And today, it was an employee at an Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonalds who helped police end what was probably one of the biggest manhunts of the year. 

On the morning of December 4, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot in broad daylight outside a Manhattan hotel. Photos of the suspect have been plastered across television and the internet ever since, as police have done their best to find him. Today, they finally caught the man who they believed murdered Thompson, and he was dining in, you guessed it, a McDonald’s restaurant. 

Despite all the technology law enforcement has at their fingertips these days, the arrest was made due to what many are calling “old-fashioned police work.” An employee at that McDonald’s saw the suspect, who we now know as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, an Ivy League-educated guy from Maryland. That employee recognized his picture and called police to let them know that he was there eating a meal.   

The more we learn about Mangione, the more interesting this case becomes. But as I was watching the police press conference about his arrest today, the fact that it was a McDonald’s employee who led to his arrest was what interested me the most. I’d like to hear more from/about this man or woman who served both fries and justice today. What motivated them to make the call? How sure were they that he was the suspect? Were they nervous? I know I would have been. Will they receive some kind of reward?   

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Meanwhile, the McDonald’s itself has become the target of some pretty hateful people. (I suspect these are the same sick people who are cheering on this murder suspect and the killing of Thompson on social media. I fully understand that the insurance industry is flawed and there are many issues at play here, but murdering someone’s father is not the way to solve them. But that’s a topic for another article.) Many are leaving one-star reviews for the restaurant on websites like Yelp, either trashing the restaurant or praising Mangione or both. 

According to Fox News, Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania on charges that included using a fake ID and unlawful possession of a firearm. He’ll likely be turned over to the NYPD on Tuesday. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference, “He matches the description of the identification we’ve been looking for” and that he was “in possession of several items that we believe will connect him to this incident.”