Michelle Monier | Editor-in-Chief
December 12, 2024
At just 7 am last Wednesday, December 4th, the business world awoke to the shocking news that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed while walking out of his hotel in New York City. Thompson was staying at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan and leaving the hotel that day for an annual investor conference when he was shot multiple times in the back. Thompson was just 50 years old with a wife and two sons and had been serving as the UnitedHealthcare CEO since 2021.
The investigation into the assassination commenced immediately, and new updates have been pouring out every day. Over this past week, NYPD has discovered and withheld a suspect, but the media was shocked to find out that the man doesn’t fit the stereotypical profile of a disgruntled shooter. Luigi Mangione is 26 years old and comes from a privileged past. Mangione graduated valedictorian of a private all-boys school in Baltimore and then attended and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master’s and bachelor’s degree in computer science. He was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and started a video game development club on campus. Senior Payton Blake said that she was “caught really off guard when [she] first heard about the event because there was so many conflicting stories and his profile is atypical of a suspected assassin or shooter.” His family is also well known in the Baltimore area, being in the real estate business and owning country clubs and golf courses. R.J Martin, one of Mangione’s past roommates, told ABC that “it’s unimaginable” that Mangione would be capable of this level of violence.
But alas, Mangione was arrested, and found with him was documentation that police have said contains information on recent health struggles, and disdain for the healthcare system and corporate America. Mangione had been living in Hawaii while working for TrueCar but had struggled with back pain and even underwent spinal cord surgery. Although he hasn’t publicly spoken out against the healthcare system, he had a Goodreads account where he wrote a four-star review of the Unabomber Manifesto (a book about the domestic terrorist who placed targeted bombs on people in corporate America). The police have concluded that the attack was targeted, and most likely a way for Mangione to make a statement against the healthcare system in America. UnitedHealthcare has recently come under fire for using AI for claims denial and was sued in 2023 for arbitrarily denying coverage. According to senior Emily Ohman, “the murder reflects a general sentiment of dissatisfaction amongst the American public in regard to health services, which has been accentuated since Covid.”
Mangione had disappeared midsummer after moving to San Francisco to work for TrueCar remotely, and his family and friends hadn’t heard from him since July. In November, his mother reported him missing. Now Mangione has been found, and he is being detained in Pennsylvania and currently fighting extradition to New York, where he is charged with murder. While he was being escorted into the courthouse on Tuesday, he screamed, “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people. It’s a lived experience.” Fighting extradition could be buying Mangione more time to get his defense organized, as he claims he is not guilty. So now it’s back to a waiting game as a criminal trial is anticipated.
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