Luigi Mangione charged with murder as ‘act of terrorism’ in killing of US CEO

The man accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare has been charged murder as an act terrorismProsecutors said Tuesday they were trying to bring him to a New York court from a Pennsylvania prison.

Luigi Mangione has already been charged in the Dec. 4 murder of Brian Thompson, but the terrorism charges are new.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thompson’s death on a street in midtown Manhattan “was a murder intended to cause terror. And we saw that reaction.”

“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted killing designed to shock, attract attention and intimidate,” he told a news conference on Tuesday. “This happened in one of the busiest areas of our city, threatening the safety of local residents as well as tourists, commuters and business people just starting their day.”

Mangione’s New York Attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo declined to comment.

Thompson, 50, was shot as he walked to a hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurer in the United States, was holding an investor conference.

The killing sparked an outpouring of resentment against America’s health insurance companies, as Americans shared stories online and elsewhere of being denied coverage, left in limbo because doctors and insurance companies disagreed, and stuck with significant bills.

The shooting also rattled senior staff, as “wanted” posters appeared on the streets of New York with the names and faces of other health executives. The release of the online concentration prompted police to warn of a possible “elevated threat”.

A New York law passed after the 9/11 attacks allows prosecutors to charge crimes as acts of terrorism if they “are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a governmental unit by intimidation or coercion, and to influence the conduct of a governmental unit by murder, assassination or kidnapping”.

Prosecutors have used the statute in a variety of contexts.

It was first used against a Bronx gang member accused of a shooting that killed a 10-year-old girl and paralyzed a man at a baptism in 2002. The prosecutor’s office said that the shooting was part of a campaign of intimidation by a gang in the area.

The state’s highest court later ruled that the act was not terrorism, overturned the sentence and ordered a new one court. The defendant, who denied involvement in the shooting, was retried, convicted of attempted murder and manslaughter, and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

In Thompson’s case, after days of intense police searches and publicity, Mangione was spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and arrested. New York police officials said Mangione was carrying the gun used to kill Thompson, a passport and various fake IDs, including one the suspect in the killing had shown to check into a New York hostel.

A 26-year-old man was charged with counterfeiting weapons in Pennsylvania and was placed on bail. His attorney from Pennsylvania questioned the evidence of the forgery charge and the legal basis of the gun charge. The lawyer also said Mangione will fight extradition to New York.

Bragg noted that Mangione has two court hearings scheduled for Thursday in Pennsylvania, including an extradition hearing.

Hours after his arrest, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office filed charges charging him with murder and other crimes. The indictment is based on these documents.

The researchers’ working theory is that Mangione, an Ivy League computer science graduate from a prominent Maryland family, was driven by anger at the US health care system. A law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press this week said he was carrying a handwritten letter at the time of his arrest that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed.

Mangione has repeatedly posted on social networks about how spinal surgery last year eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if they’ve been told they just have to live with it.

In a post on Reddit in late April, he advised a person with a back problem to seek a second opinion from surgeons and, if necessary, to say that the pain is making it impossible to work.

“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry reacts to these keywords much more strongly than you do when describing excruciating pain and how it affects your quality of life.”

According to the insurer, he was never a customer of UnitedHealthcare.

In recent months, Mangione has apparently cut himself off from family and close friends. His family reported him missing to San Francisco authorities in November.

Thompson, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, trained as an accountant. A married father of two high school students, he worked for the giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became its CEO. insurance weapons in 2021.

(AP)