Dec. 2 (UPI) — The alleged shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was in court Tuesday for the second day of his evidentiary hearing.
Luigi Mangione, 27, is accused of fatally shooting Thompson, 50, on a sidewalk in Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024. Thompson was on his way to a UHC shareholders’ meeting. Mangione was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa.
Altoona police officer Joseph Detwiler, one of the first officers on the scene, said he didn’t think he’d actually find Mangione at the McDonald’s after a manager called 911.
“I did not think it was going to be the person that they thought it was,” Detwiler testified Tuesday.
But when he saw the man in a booth near the restaurant’s bathrooms, he knew it was the right person. He asked him to pull down his mask.
“I knew it was him immediately,” Detwiler said. About 20 minutes later, he and other officers arrested him.
Mangione and his lawyers are in court to get his first statements suppressed as well as the notebook and gun found in his backpack excluded from trial because they were seized before police had a search warrant.
The notebook, said defense lawyer Karen Agnifolo, could “irreparably prejudice Mr. Mangione at his multiple upcoming trials.”
Pennsylvania prison guards assigned to watch Mangione to prevent “an Epstein-style situation” testified about their conversations with Mangione.
Defense lawyers want all statements he made to law enforcement from his arrests to when he was sent to New York on Dec. 19 suppressed from his trial.
Officer Matthew Henry, a corrections officer assigned to watch Mangione said on Dec.10, 2024, Mangione told him he had a backpack with a 3D-printed gun and foreign currency. Mangione also mentioned having a magazine of ammunition, Henry said. But Henry said he didn’t converse with Mangione. He said he only answered Mangione’s questions about the prison.
Tomas Rivers, another corrections officer, said he was assigned to watch Mangione beginning on Dec. 16. He said Mangione talked to him often, and they discussed the American health care system as compared with other countries.
They also talked about Mangione’s case and how news outlets focused on the crime, while people on social media discussed the problems in health care.
The Mapp hearing is expected to last several days.
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