The person of interest in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killing has been identified as 26-year-old computer whiz who graduated valedictorian from his Maryland high school.
Luigi Mangione, of Towson, Md., was carrying identification with his name on it, as well as a fake I.D., when he was taken in for questioning, law enforcement sources told the New York Times.
The break in the case comes after a McDonald’s employee in Altoona, Pennsylvania, noticed that he resembled the suspect seen on the New York Police Department’s wanted posters.
Mangione graduated as valedictorian from the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to the New York Post.
Upon graduating, he said he intended to study artificial intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania.
Police have been hunting since Wednesday for the man who executed 50-year-old Thompson as he was heading to an investors’ meeting at the New York Hilton in Manhattan.
He was transported six blocks away to Mount Sinai West hospital and pronounced dead just as the conference was getting underway at 8 a.m.
Leading up to the shooting, the suspect seemed to be “lying in wait” for Thompson, with several witnesses spotting a man matching Magione’s description on the premises around 6 a.m.
Thompson’s wife Paulette told NBC News that her husband had received several recent threats.
“Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details,” she said. “I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.
