New York police have found a backpack that might belong to the suspect in the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, CNN reported Friday.
Police found the backpack during a second search of an area in Central Park where the suspect was seen Wednesday morning riding a bicycle into the park with a backpack on and riding out of it with it off, the network reported.
An NYPD spokesperson told CNN a backpack was found in the park but said it "still has to be processed." It was being taken to a lab in Queens to be forensically tested.
"Now, what's in the backpack?" CNN analyst John Miller said on "The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer." "What evidence will it offer? Can they exploit DNA from it? Will it have a hair that can be matched later? What are the contents of that backpack? Does it contain the semiautomatic 9-millimeter silenced pistol that is the murder weapon?
"We don't know that and neither do police. Once they located where it was between some boulders just south of the Central Park carousel, the famous merry-go-round that is just north of 59th Street.
"They froze that area. They bagged it. It's going to be taken to the NYPD lab and handled by their scientific people, so that any evidence that is there can be preserved. They will not open it until it's under the control of those techs and lab people from the crime scene unit and the laboratory division in Queens."
Thompson was murdered Wednesday morning outside of the Midtown Hilton Hotel, where he was to attend parent company UnitedHealth Group's investor day. After discharging his firearm and hitting the CEO in his back and right calf, the suspect fled to Central Park, first on foot, and then on what appeared to be an electric bike.
Within hours, the NYPD's tip line was flooded with callers identifying the bag's brand as Peak Design, including Peter Derin, the founder of the San Francisco-based company.
"This is insane," Dering told The New York Times on Thursday. "Every aspect of this is so insane."
Dering identified the bag as a version of Peak Design's Everyday Backpack, which the company stopped producing in 2019. The shooter likely bought the bag between 2016 and 2019 or, less likely, bought the bag used from Peak Design's website, according to Dering.
Police are homing in on the identity of the gunman, who fatally shot Thompson in what police called a "brazen targeted attack." According to police, someone who appeared to be the gunman checked into the HI New York City Hostel on Nov. 24 after arriving in the city on a Greyhound bus from Atlanta. He checked out of the hostel on Nov. 29 and checked back in on Nov. 30, law enforcement told CNN on Thursday.
In photos the NYPD released Thursday of the suspect apparently at the hostel, the suspect's face is uncovered while flirting with a hostel employee who told him to pull down his mask and smile, ABC News reported. The suspect is said to have checked into the hostel with a fake New Jersey ID that police found, along with a cellphone. Police also collected a DNA sample they said is related to the case.