Mangione faces first-degree murder charge that brands him a terrorist
NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione on Tuesday was formally accused of first-degree murder, a charge that branded him a terrorist and aimed directly at the idea that the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was a legitimate political act.
“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a news conference Tuesday.
The assassination of the CEO, Brian Thompson, on Dec. 4 in the heart of Manhattan set off a dayslong search and captivated Americans, many of whom vented their frustrations on dealings with health insurance companies. Some voiced their support for Mangione and rooted for him to elude capture.
But on Tuesday, prosecutors said that Mangione’s actions were meant to further terrorism. They were, prosecutors said, “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” and to “affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder.”
Mangione, 26, also faces two counts of second-degree murder and weapons charges in New York in the killing of Thompson.
A lawyer for Mangione, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to comment on the new charges Tuesday.
Bragg said that they were in response to the “brazen, targeted and premeditated shooting,” adding that he couldn’t think of another office “more equipped to handle a terrorism charge.”
If convicted on the highest charges, Mangione faces a sentence of life in prison without parole.
After fleeing New York City following the shooting, Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, days later after a customer recognized him and an employee called local police. He was charged with gun charges and forgery in Pennsylvania.
On Thursday morning, Mangione is scheduled to return to a courthouse in Pennsylvania for two hearings, including one on charges he faces in that state and another on efforts to extradite him to New York.
His lawyer in Pennsylvania has said that Mangione will fight his extradition, and has argued that he is being imprisoned illegally. However, Bragg said Tuesday that his office had “indications” that Mangione could waive his extradition hearing this week, allowing the transfer to take place faster.
The killing at the center of Mangione’s charges unfolded early in the morning of Dec. 4.
Mangione arrived outside a Hilton hotel on West 54th Street — masked and hooded — and waited, the police said. After nearly an hour, according to prosecutors, Thompson arrived at the hotel to prepare for a UnitedHealthcare investors’ day gathering. As Thompson walked to the hotel’s entrance, prosecutors say, Mangione walked up behind him and raised a 3D-printed 9 mm handgun fitted with a suppressor and fatally shot him.
In the hours after the assassination, the police launched a citywide manhunt for the shooter, who fled the scene on what they have said was an electric bicycle. In their efforts to locate the shooter, police released surveillance pictures of the man — including one in which he smiled at the front desk of the hostel on the Upper West Side where the police said he had stayed.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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