Worried loved ones reached out to the Ivy League graduate named as a person of interest in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killing days before the executive was executed outside of a New York City hotel.
One of Luigi Mangione’s loved ones shared a message on X to let him know that he cared about him and “missed him” on Nov. 25, a day after the shooter was believed to have arrived in Manhattan on a Greyhound bus.
“Thinking of you and prayers everyday in your name,” wrote user @Collin30923201P on Nov. 25. “Know you are missed and loved.”
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Another suggested that loved ones had been concerned about his whereabouts the month prior.
“@PepMangione Hey, are you ok? Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you,” wrote X user @TheRealMandusa on Oct. 30 on the platform.
The account, which is under the name P. Collins, also tweeted out Mangione‘s LinkTree. It has since been made private.
Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate from Towson, Md., was arrested on gun charges at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania Monday after an employee recognized him from wanted posters, police said.
“At this time, he is believed to be our person of interest in the brazen, targeted murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, last Wednesday in midtown Manhattan,” New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters.
The 26-year-old was apprehended with a ghost gun similar to the weapon used in Thompson’s killing, police said. He also had a silencer for the weapon, several fake IDs and writings critical of the healthcare industry.
The manifesto warned “these parasites had it coming,” and said, “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done,” sources told CNN.
Mangione is expected to is to appear in court for a preliminary arraignment Monday evening.
Police had been searching since Wednesday for the man who executed 50-year-old Thompson as the executive was heading to an investors' meeting at the New York Hilton in Manhattan.
Authorities have said the alleged killer spent ten days in the city before the “targeted” attack.
The suspect of the murder left a plethora of clues at the crime scene and around New York City before he fled: A partial fingerprint on a water bottle; words engraved on the bullet casings; video footage that caught him escaping; burner cell phones and Monopoly money in his bag recovered in Central Park.
However, many photos released of the suspect featured him with a masked face-- except in one, where he was flirting with a worker at the hostel he was staying at.
Officials with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office are in Altoona for questioning, the New York Times reported.
Mangione graduated from a tony all-boys prep school, Gilman School, where he was the valedictorian in 2016.
In his speech, he praised his fellow classmates for “coming up with new ideas and challenging the world.”
“To the class of 2016, a kind of class that only comes around once every 50 years, it’s been an incredible journey and I simply can’t imagine the last few years with any other group of guys,” he said.
He continued his education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a master’s and bachelor’s degree in computer science and a minor in mathematics, a university spokesperson told CNN.
After his graduation, he worked as a software engineer for the online car sales company TrueCar, according to his LinkedIn page.
He also spent time in Hawaii, where he was a member of a co-working space, Hub Coworking Hawaii, in the Kakaako neighborhood of Honolulu, the New York Times reported.
The 26-year-old hails from a large family in the Baltimore area, one of 37 grandchildren descended from millionaire real estate developer Nick Mangione Sr., according to a 2008 obituary.
He is a cousin of Republican Maryland state legislator Nino Mangione, a spokesperson for the delegate’s office confirmed to the Associated Press.
Social media accounts believed to belong to Mangione paint him as an anti-capitalist who liked online quotes from “Unabomber’’ Ted Kaczynski that blasted the medical community.
It’s unclear whether his frustrations with the industry stemmed from personal experience, though an X-ray image was shared on his X account of sacral spine fusion caused by a condition more commonly found in athletes than in the general population.
Friends of Mangione seemingly unfriended him on Facebook after the news of his arrest broke, going from 1,500 friends to 1,200 on Monday, before his page was wiped from the internet.
Former classmates expressed shock over his arrest.
“Quite honestly, he had everything going for him,” high school classmate Freddie Leatherbury told the Associated Press.
“He does not seem like the kind of guy to do this based on everything I’d known about him in high school,” Leatherbury added.
