McDonald's restaurants in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where an employee at one identified the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, are being attacked on social media for tipping off police.
Users left reviews for at least three McDonald's locations in or around Altoona, with dozens leaving one-star ratings and complaining about "rats." Others called out "snitches," Axios reported Monday.
The critical Google reviews parallel social media reactions, many of which valorize Luigi Mangione, 26, of Towson, Maryland, who was taken into custody following the tip and arrested on gun charges. He has yet to be charged in connection with the killing.
"This location has rats in the kitchen that will make you sick and your insurance isn't going to cover it," one reviewer wrote.
The killing of Thompson outside a midtown Manhattan hotel on Wednesday sparked a national debate about the U.S. health insurance industry and its behavior, with many people expressing a lack of sympathy for Thompson's death and praising his killer.
"The surge of social media posts praising and glorifying the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson is deeply concerning," Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at The Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, told NBC News.
Savannah Sparks, who has 1.3 million followers on her TikTok account, where she tracks down and reveals the identities of people who do racist or seemingly criminal acts in viral videos, said "we're pretty apathetic toward" finding Thompson's killer, according to NBC News.