After UnitedHealthcare CEO killed, San Francisco police alert FBI to suspect’s identity

NEW YORK (AP) — A day after a masked gunman killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in New York City, San Francisco police gave the FBI a potentially valuable clue about the suspect’s identity: He watched It looks like they were greeted by Luigi Mangione, a man who was reported missing last month.

San Francisco police provided Mangione’s name to the FBI on Dec. 5, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

That day, the New York Police Department released surveillance images showing the face of the suspected shooter as he checked into a Manhattan hotel.

The FBI received a tip from the San Francisco Police Department regarding the possible identity of the suspect in multiple tips received from the public and law enforcement regarding a homicide in Midtown Manhattan on December 4, 2024. issued a statement on Friday.

The FBI statement did not provide further details about the nature of the tip or when it was received, but said New York agents “conducted routine investigative activities and forwarded this and other tips to New York City police.” Bureau”.

Mangione was arrested on Monday, December 9, after an employee at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, called police and said there was a man eating breakfast in the restaurant who looked a lot like the wanted shooter.

NYPD Detective Joseph Kenny said at the time that the department’s investigators did not know Mangione’s name until he showed up at the McDonald’s.

A message seeking comment was left with the NYPD on Friday.

The San Francisco Chronicle first reported the San Francisco department’s tip to the FBI.

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was ambushed and shot to death outside a hotel where his company was holding its annual investor conference.

Leaders of the insurance company’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, described Thompson as a kind and talented man in a guest article published in The New York Times on Friday.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Whitty acknowledged that the patchwork U.S. health care system “is not working as well as it should” but said Thompson cares about customers and is working to make it better.

The killing was seen as a violent expression of widespread anger against the insurance industry. Witty said company employees are struggling to make sense of the killings and the vitriol and threats directed at colleagues.

Police said Mangione was found with a gun that matched shell casings found at the shooting scene and a three-page letter in which he lamented the high cost of medical care in the United States and specifically mentioned UnitedHealthcare’s profits and size. The company is a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurance company in the United States. Mangione is being held in Pennsylvania and intends to plead not guilty to murder charges in New York, his attorney said.

Witty said he understood people’s frustration but described Thompson as part of the solution.

Thompson will never forget growing up on his family’s farmhouse in Iowa and is focused on improving the consumer experience.

“His father spent more than 40 years unloading grain elevators. We know that as a boy, BT worked on the farm and fished the gravel pit with his brother. He never forgot where he came from, as in the search When developing ways to improve care, he put first and foremost the needs of people living in places like Jewell, Iowa,” Witty wrote.

Witty said his company is also partly to blame for a lack of understanding of underwriting decisions.

“We know the health system is not functioning as well as it should and we understand people’s dissatisfaction with it. No one would design a system like ours. And no one does. This is a system that has been patchworked together over decades,” Whitty wrote. “Our mission is to help it work better.”

He said it was unfair that the company’s employees were receiving serial threats as they grieved the loss of their colleagues.

“No employee — whether it’s someone answering a customer call or a nurse visiting a patient in their home — should have to fear for their own safety or the safety of their loved ones,” he wrote.

A Lakeland, Florida, woman was accused this week of threatening a worker at her own health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, over the phone. In the recorded call, she quoted Thompson’s killer’s words written on bullet casings and said, “You’re next,” police said.

Police said the gunman was waiting outside a hotel where the health insurance company was holding an investor conference in the early morning hours of December 4. He approached Thompson from behind, shot him and then fled on his bicycle.

Mangione is fighting an attempt to extradite him to New York so he could face murder charges in Thompson’s death.