Gothamist - Luigi Mangione pleads not guilty to murder charges in NYC killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO

By Samantha Max
Published Dec 23, 2024 at 9:44 a.m. ET

The man accused of shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a calculated killing outside a midtown hotel pleaded not guilty to murder in furtherance of terrorism and other felony charges Monday.

Luigi Mangione, 26, was arraigned in a lower Manhattan courtroom after he was indicted on a host of state charges last week. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York also indicted him on federal charges — the most serious of which is punishable by the death penalty.

Prosecutors say Mangione targeted the health insurance executive while he was in New York City for an investor conference on Dec. 4. They say Mangione took a bus to Manhattan, checked into an Upper West Side hostel with a fake ID, waited for about an hour outside Thompson’s hotel and then shot him twice from behind, using an untraceable, 3D-printed ghost gun.

Authorities say the shooter fled the scene, and law enforcement pored over surveillance footage to track his movements. Officers arrested Mangione at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania days later. Since then, the Ivy League graduate and valedictorian of his high school has been seen as a folk hero for some of those those frustrated by the health insurance industry.

Dozens of members of the public crowded into the 13th-floor courtroom, filling four rows of wooden benches. More than a dozen supporters also gathered in the sub-freezing temperatures outside the courthouse. Some held signs that said “Deny Defend Depose” — the same words police said were written on bullets found at the crime scene — and “United Healthcare stole my livelihood.”

/snip