Prosecutors charge suspect with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO as an act of terrorism

NEW YORK -

The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from a Pennsylvania jail.

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Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thompson's death on a midtown Manhattan street “was a killing that was intended to evoke terror. And we’ve seen that reaction."

Mangione’s New York lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to comment.

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Thompson, 50, was shot while walking to a hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the United States' biggest medical insurer — was holding an investor conference.

The killing kindled a fiery outpouring of resentment toward U.S. health insurance companies, as Americans swapped stories online and elsewhere of being denied coverage, left in limbo as doctors and insurers disagreed, and stuck with sizeable bills.

The shooting also rattled C-suites, as “wanted” posters with other health care executives’ names and faces appeared on New York streets and some social media users extolled Mangione's deed as payback.

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Tuesday that "any attempt to rationalize this is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice.”

A New York law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks allows prosecutors to charge crimes as acts of terrorism when they're “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”

Prosecutors have applied the statute to various contexts. Some related to international extremism, but the law was first used against a Bronx gang member after a hail of gunfire killed a 10-year-old girl and paralyzed a man outside a christening party in 2002. The state's highest court later said the conduct didn’t amount to terrorism, and a retrial produced convictions on other charges.

Thompson's killing, Bragg noted, happened early on a workday in an area frequented by commuters, businesspeople and tourists.

“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” the district attorney said.

After days of intense police searches and publicity, Mangione was spotted Dec. 9 at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and arrested. New York police officials have said Mangione was carrying the gun used to kill Thompson, a passport and various fake IDs, including one that the suspected shooter presented to check into a New York hostel.

The 26-year-old was charged with Pennsylvania gun and forgery offenses and locked up there without bail. His Pennsylvania lawyer has questioned the evidence for the forgery charge and the legal grounding for the gun charge. The attorney also has said Mangione would fight extradition to New York.

Mangione has two court hearings scheduled for Thursday in Pennsylvania, including an extradition hearing, Bragg noted.

Hours after his arrest, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed paperwork charging him with murder and other offenses. The indictment builds on that paperwork.

Investigators’ working theory is that Mangione, an Ivy League computer science grad from a prominent Maryland family, was propelled by anger at the U.S. health care system. A law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press last week said that when arrested, he was carrying a handwritten letter that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed.

Mangione repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if told they just had to live with it.

In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with a back problem to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say the pain made it impossible to work.

“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”

He was never a UnitedHealthcare client, according to the insurer.

Mangione apparently cut himself off from his family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing in San Francisco in November.

After San Francisco authorities got a tip to their New York counterparts, investigators spoke to Mangione's mother in San Francisco late on Dec. 7. In that interview, "she said it might be something that she could see him doing,” New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Tuesday.

Before the case detectives could follow up on that lead, Mangione was arrested, Kenny said.

Mangione's relatives have said in a statement that they were “shocked and devastated” by his arrest.

Thompson, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, was trained as an accountant. A married father of two high-schoolers, he had worked at the giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.

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Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed.