Luigi Mangione is placed in an New York Police Department SUV on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024, after a Pennsylvania judge ordered his transfer to New York city to face prosecution for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (Screenshot/WTAJ)
The suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was turned over to New York police after waiving hearings Thursday in a western Pennsylvania courtroom.
Luigi Mangione, 26, is charged with murder as an act of terrorism for the shooting of Thompson, 50, outside a Manhattan hotel where UnitedHealthcare was holding an investor meeting Dec. 4.
Mangione appeared Thursday in Blair County court for hearings on his extradition to New York and on charges stemming from his arrest in an Altoona McDonald’s restaurant where he was spotted eating breakfast five days after the shooting.
Mangione’s attorney Thomas Dickey waived both hearings. The Associated Press reported he waived the hearing in an agreement with Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks in which Mangione would receive a copy of the Altoona police investigative report.
Blair County Common Pleas Judge David Consiglio ordered Mangione to be transported to New York to face prosecution there, according to court records. Video provided by Altoona television station WTAJ showed Mangione being placed in a black police SUV with several New York Police Department officers.
Mangione was also charged with carrying a firearm without a license, forgery, records or identification tampering, possession of instruments of crime and presenting false identification to law enforcement. Mangione is a 2020 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania whose last known address, according to police, was in Honolulu.
New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Dec. 9 that Mangione was in possession of what New York police described as a “ghost gun” made with a 3D printer and a “handwritten document that speaks to his motivation and mindset.”
He also provided Altoona police with false identification including one that matched a false New Jersey driver’s license that the suspect in the shooting used to check into a New York hostel.
Thompson had been CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest for-profit health insurance providers, for nearly three years. His killing has prompted an outpouring of criticism of the company and the United States’ health care system generally for denying or unnecessarily complicating medical treatment.