Sportsman, graduate of a prestigious university and from a wealthy family: on paper, Luigi Mangione was promised a bright future, but elements reveal the anger against the health system of this young man, suffering from a back, suspected of the murder of an American boss.
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Investigators notably found a manifesto where Mangione, 26, criticizes the health system “the most expensive in the world, while the life expectancy of an American is ranked 42nd in the world,” said Joseph Kenny, of the New York Police Department, on ABC.
Arrested Monday, the suspect was charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthCare, the largest private health insurer in the United States.
This news surprised acquaintances of the tall, dark-haired young man with curly hair, who highlighted his advantageous musculature on his alleged social networks.
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It’s “a real shock,” a former classmate of Luigi Mangione’s in a posh private school in Baltimore told AFP, referring to a boy who was then rather “calm” and “intelligent,” who came first in his class in 2016.
“It’s unimaginable,” RJ Martin, who lived in Hawaii with the suspect in 2022, told CNN, remembering him as a “caring person.”
“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We pray for Brian Thompson’s family,” wrote the Mangione family in a statement sent to the media by the suspect’s cousin, Nino Mangione, elected to the local Maryland legislature.
“Power of Technology”
The Mangione family, of Italian origin, is well known in the Baltimore area, according to the news site The Baltimore Banner. The patriarch, Nick Mangione, had made his fortune in real estate, owning country clubs, retirement homes and radio stations.
Luigi Mangione “was a fervent believer in the power of technology to change the world,” Aaron Cranston, one of his elementary school friends, told the New York Times, describing a computer enthusiast.
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In 2018, the Maryland native co-chaired a group of students to develop video games at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the best in the country, from which he graduated in 2020 in engineering.
“In high school I started playing a lot of indie video games and things like that, but I wanted to make my own game so I learned to code,” Luigi Mangione was quoted as saying in an article – deleted- from the university.
“Premonitory predictions”
What motivations pushed this young man, obviously well integrated, to, as is suspected, coldly shoot down the boss of UnitedHealthcare in the middle of the street in New York?
Aaron Cranston, the childhood friend, speaks of a boy who was not particularly political.
RJ Martin, the former roommate in Hawaii, remembers discussions about “improving the world,” talking about different issues like the health care system. But he had not detected any particular anger in Luigi Mangione.
The police are wondering in particular about a medical radio photo displayed on the suspect’s profile on the social network X.
Back problems mentioned by RJ Martin: after a surfing lesson, “he was in bed for about a week,” he told CNN.
This year, he heard from his friend, who confirmed that he had had surgery and sent him photos of the x-rays.
Did the young man have political motivations?
“He wrote a lot about his contempt for American businesses and in particular for the health industry,” New York police officer Joseph Kenny detailed on ABC about the manifesto found on the suspect.
Luigi Mangione, although very active on X, has not published anything since June 10.
In January, a profile in his name commented on the internet on the writings of Ted Kaczynski, aka “Unabomber”, who had terrified the United States with parcel bomb attacks between 1978 and 1995.
“It is easy to write quickly and without thinking that it is the manifesto of a madman, to avoid facing some of the embarrassing problems it raises,” believes Luigi Mangione. “But it is simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out to be.”
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