According to police sources, the suspect in the killing of a health insurance company executive in New York managed to escape the city using a train, contrary to the initial belief that he had taken a bus.
Video evidence indicates that Luigi Mangione was seen departing from the George Washington Bridge bus station, where he had been brought by taxi shortly after the incident. He then made his way to Penn Station and boarded a train headed towards Philadelphia, as per ABC News.
Although the specifics of how he moved from the bus station to the train station remain unknown, the two locations are typically a 30-minute subway ride apart. Initial reports from law enforcement had stated that there was no visual confirmation of his departure from the bus station, whether via bus or other means.
Pennsylvania investigators say he spent several days on a general route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. He was captured on Monday in Altoona, about 240 miles west of Philadelphia, after a McDonald’s employee recognized him from the photos released by police and called 911.
After the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the masked gunman ran into a nearby alley, where he hopped on a bike and rode into Central Park. He exited Central Park minutes later, and minutes after that was seen without the bike, hailing a cab that took him to the bus station, police said. He arrived at the station at about 7:30 a.m., some 45 minutes after the shooting.
He had arrived in New York 10 days before the shooting, on November 24, taking a bus into the city. That bus originated in Atlanta, but it’s not known where the suspect boarded. He was seen on the bus in Washington, D.C., however.
Mangione was carrying fake IDs, including one he used to check into the New York hostel where he stayed while he was there, and a ghost gun investigators believe was the murder weapon — they have said that the shell casings found at the scene match the weapon Mangione was carrying.
They also found writings, one a handwritten 262-word document that investigators have called a “manifesto” in which Mangione says he acted alone and rails against UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurer in the world, a company he called “parasites.” A second document is a spiral notebook that includes more details about the planning of the shooting, police sources say, including one section in which he says he thought about using a bomb but in the end decided to target the company CEO “at his own bean counting conference.”
Thompson was on his way from his hotel to the Hilton, where the company’s annual investors’ conference was to be held, when he was shot.
Mangione is being held on weapons charges in Pennsylvania. New York officials charged him with second degree murder, but they are also presenting evidence to a grand jury. Mangione is so far fighting extradition to New York, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Friday there was some indication that he may end that fight some time next week.
In other odds and ends of the case, New York police have still not found the bike the shooter used to flee the scene and suspect it may have been stolen after the suspect abandoned it. And San Francisco Police said that one of its officers recognized Mangione from the photos released by police and photos provided by his mother when she reported him missing earlier this year.
The California department said it contacted the FBI with the identification, and the FBI said it provided the information to New York Police, who have said they didn’t know the suspect’s name until he was arrested in Pennsylvania, according to ABC News. On Friday, they said they did get the information from the FBI but claimed it didn’t indicate it came from another law enforcement agency so they didn’t actually look at it.
