Police caught up with alleged assassin Luigi Mangione less than a week after, they suspect, he gunned down Brian Thompson in broad daylight in front of a hotel in New York City. Thompson, 50, was the CEO of one of the country’s largest health insurance companies, UnitedHealthcare.
Magione, 26, an upper class man originally from Maryland who graduated from Penn State, may have been motivated by some kind of resentment against health insurance company practices. Police say someone, presumably Mangione, had inscribed the words “deny,” “depose,” and “defend,” on the shell casings left at the scene after the gunfire. These words are similar to the title of a book that castigates the insurance sector for working to deny payment to patients in need. The title of the book is Delay, Deny, Defend.
Police caught the suspect at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after someone spotted him and correctly deduced that he was the same person they had seen in CCTV stills of the killer police released to the public.
It is important to remember that nearly everything about this case is speculative at this point. While police and the public may have some clues about what may have motivated Mangione, nothing is proven, and there is a mountain of evidence behind the scenes that no one in the public has seen yet.
But the public speculation is that Mangione had some personal resentment toward health insurance companies. Police have apparently found writings, including a manifesto, in which Mangione expressed that he was “frustrated with the health care system in the United States.”
NewsNation has a comprehensive timeline of the crime and the aftermath.
If Mangione was motivated by malice toward the health insurance sector, one Twitter/X user thinks there may be an element of hypocrisy in the alleged shooter’s motivation. David Petersen posted that Mangione’s family, who are wealthy, own a for-profit nursing home as part of their business Lorian Health Systems.
Petersen points out that Lorian Health Systems has a poor track record of patient care, with low scores on vaccination rates for residents and staff, plus poor grades on health inspections.
Here’s a sampling of the online reaction:
