Engineer graduated from a major university and son of a good family: after the arrest on Monday of a 26-year-old young man in the investigation into the “targeted” assassination of the boss of a health insurance giant in New York, the profile of Luigi Mangione questions his motivations.
At dawn on Wednesday, Brian Thompson, boss of UnitedHealthcare, the leading health insurer in the United States, was shot dead in cold blood, in the street, in front of a Manhattan hotel.
When his name was revealed, the young man’s alleged social networks went into turmoil, a sign of the American public’s enthusiasm for this affair in a country where private health insurance companies are regularly accused of enriching themselves on the backs of patients. .
An Instagram profile, which could be his, shows a tall, dark-haired young man in a suit and tie in his main photo. Around 2:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT), he had some 2,000 subscribers, more than 45,000 two hours later. On
“They’d better let you go free, you’re a hero,” commented a user on this Instagram profile, accessible to all, referring to speculation that the suspect could have acted to take revenge for a dispute with this assurance.
At dawn on Wednesday, Brian Thompson, 50-year-old boss of UnitedHealthcare, the leading health insurer in the United States, was shot dead in cold blood, in the middle of the street, in front of a Manhattan hotel.
“At this time, we believe that this is the person we are looking for in the targeted and unscrupulous murder of Brian Thompson,” police boss Jessica Tisch said of Luigi Mangione. from New York, during a press conference on Monday.
The man was presented by authorities as a native of the state of Maryland (northeast), also having links to San Francisco and whose last known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Police found a kit firearm, “which may have been made by a 3D printer” and a silencer, similar to those used by the killer, according to authorities. A three-page handwritten document describing his “hostility towards American companies” was also seized, police said.
The first elements of Luigi Mangione’s biography evoke a young man with a diploma, the son of an influential family in the Baltimore region, which owns large establishments including several “country clubs”, according to the American media.
His cousin, Nino Mangione, is elected Republican to the local lower house of this state in the eastern United States, south of New York, according to the same source.
In 2016, Luigi Mangione finished first in the class of Gilman High School in Baltimore, an all-boys establishment.
“My impression is that he was a normal guy, a nice kid, (…) intelligent,” a former student of the same high school told AFP, “surprised” to discover such news.
“From my point of view, there was nothing out of the ordinary about him,” he said.
Luigi Mangione then studied at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the private establishments of the prestigious and selective Ivy League.
Contacted by AFP, a UPenn spokesperson confirmed that Mr. Mangione had graduated in 2020 with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering sciences.
While at university, the young man co-chaired a group of 60 students to develop video games, according to a now-deleted university web page, saved by the “Wayback Machine” archive feature.
According to his LinkedIn account, Luigi Mangione worked as a statistics engineer for the online car dealership True Car. A spokesperson for the group told AFP that he had not been employed since 2023, without giving further details.
His Instagram profile doesn’t allow us to learn much more, except that he posted a few photos, often with friends, in 2018, 2019 and 2021. One of them shows him shirtless, his abs on display.
On X, the young man appears to have been much more active. But his publications, often convoluted, do not allow us to identify a clearer profile.
The authorities, who indicated that they were continuing to examine his social networks, did not elaborate further on a possible motive.
According to American media reports, not confirmed by the police, the words “delay” and “deny” – terms referring to rejections of claims for compensation for care by insurance companies – were written on shell casings found at the crime scene.
Luigi Mangione was to be brought before the local courts for illegal possession of weapons and then soon to be transferred to court in New York.
