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Law enforcement officials released more details about the suspect accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, including how he reacted when first confronted by police.
Surveillance video captured a masked man shooting and killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of the largest health care insurance company in the world, outside a Manhattan hotel last week. After a massive police manhunt, police said that a suspect was identified as Luigi Mangione, a former Ivy League college student and critic of capitalism.
He reportedly said that he didn’t know anything about the currency police found and suggested that maybe it had been planted.
He was taken into custody Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a worker at the restaurant noticed him and notified the police.
Lt. Col. George Bivens of the Pennsylvania State Police said that officers found $8,000 of U.S. currency and $2,000 worth of foreign currency with Mangione as well as bags that were manufactured in order to block cellular phone data from being transmitted.
He was also found with a ghost gun, a sound suppressor, and fake identification.
Police indicated in a criminal complaint that they recognized Mangione as soon as they asked him to pull down his mask at McDonald’s. When they asked him whether he had been in New York City recently, police said he was quiet but started shaking.
Video showed the suspect being taken into the Blair County courthouse at his first court hearing in Altoona.
He reportedly said that he didn’t know anything about the currency police found and suggested that maybe it had been planted. He also denied that the bag indicated criminal sophistication and said that the bag was simply waterproof.
Mangione was charged with firearm crimes in Pennsylvania and is expected to face charges related to the murder from New York.
Online sleuths were busily searching for accounts that matched Mangione’s description. One account praised the book written by Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who was imprisoned for killing three people and injuring 23 others in a nationwide mail-bombing operation.
The New York Post reported that Mangione was angry at the way a family member had been treated by health companies.
Many on the left have praised the cold-blooded murder of Thompson simply out of seething hatred for wealthy CEOs and the health care system in the U.S.
Thompson’s wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that her husband had been receiving death threats.
“Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him,” she said.
Here’s more Blaze News coverage about the developments in the CEO murder case.
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