Luigi Nicholas Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, graduated from a prestigious Ivy League institution and is currently in jail facing second-degree murder charges. A professor from a renowned university shed light on the radicalization prevalent in Ivy League campuses nationwide, providing insight into the educational background of the accused.
Thompson, aged 50, was fatally shot from behind while on the sidewalk outside a New York City Hilton hotel on December 4, just before a shareholder conference. Following a five-day manhunt spanning the country, the 26-year-old Mangione was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday.
Raised within a notable family in Maryland, the murder suspect completed both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a member of the Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society specializing in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
“It is fairly uniform in the Ivy League and other so-called elite educational institutions that they skew extremely heavily to the left among the faculty,” Cornell Law professor William Jacobson told Fox News Digital. “The modern Democratic Party . . . leans very heavily to the left, has a very strong anti-American, anti-capitalist wing to it . . . so it would not surprise me if somebody growing up and getting educated in that atmosphere becomes radicalized.”
The University of Pennsylvania, Luigi Mangione’s alma mater, refused to comment directly about their former student’s arrest in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (iStock)
Mangione has been charged with second-degree murder, second- and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument in the killing of Thompson, according to a felony arrest warrant in New York.
“I think people need to focus on what the evidence is, what in his background might have radicalized him . . . what in his background would have led him to engage in such an elaborate plot,” Jacobson said.
“This is not a spontaneous act of violence. This was obviously clearly planned. [The suspect] identified the person, identified the company, identified where he would be, identified when he would be vulnerable.”
Fox News’ Audrey Conklin and Christina Coulter contributed to this report.
