The family of suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson assassin Luigi Mangione released a statement, expressing shock, devastation, and sharing condolences to the Thompson family.
"Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest," his cousin, Maryland lawmaker Nino Mangione, wrote in a statement posted to X Monday night. "We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved."
Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, was arrested Monday in the killing of Thompson, who headed one of the United States’ largest medical insurance companies.
He remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was initially charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. By late evening, prosecutors in Manhattan had added a charge of murder, according to an online court docket. He is expected to be extradited to New York.
New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a Manhattan news conference that Mangione was carrying a gun like the one used to kill Thompson and the same fake ID the shooter had used to check into a New York hostel, along with a passport and other fraudulent IDs.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Mangione also had a three-page, handwritten document that shows "some ill will toward corporate America."
A law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity said the document included a line in which Mangione claimed to have acted alone.
"To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone," the document said, according to the official.
It also had a line that said, "I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming."
A grandson of a wealthy, self-made real estate developer and philanthropist, Mangione was valedictorian at his elite Baltimore prep school, where his 2016 graduation speech lauded his classmates' "incredible courage to explore the unknown and try new things."
He went on to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a spokesperson said.
He worked for a time for the car-buying website TrueCar and left in 2023, CEO Jantoon Reigersman said by email.
From January to June 2022, Mangione lived at Surfbreak, a "co-living" space at the edge of Honolulu tourist mecca Waikiki.
Information from The Associated Press was used to compile this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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