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A five-day manhunt in the US for a suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has ended with an arrest and multiple felony and misdemeanour charges filed in court.
US media report that Luigi Mangione, 26, a graduate from Maryland, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after an employee tipped off police.
So far, Mangione is charged with one felony count of forgery, one felony count of carrying a firearm without a license, one misdemeanour count of tampering with records or identification, one misdemeanour count of possessing instruments of a crime and one misdemeanour count of false identification to law enforcement authorities.
He has not, to date, been charged with killing Thompson.
CNN reported that he did not enter a plea at his first court appearance on Monday evening (US time), just hours after his arrest.
The fatal shooting of Thompson outside an investors’ conference in Midtown Manhattan sparked an exhaustive manhunt.
New York police combed the city for evidence and pored through thousands of hours of video footage.
CNN reports that police are continuing to look into whether words found on the casings of the bullets fired – marked “Deny,” “Defend,” and “Depose” – may point to a motive.
A 2010 book critiquing the insurance industry is titled, Delay Deny Defend, a common description of the industry’s tactics.
Still missing is an electric bike the suspect is believed to have rode toward Central Park after the shooting, according to surveillance images. Divers have searched a lake in Central Park for the weapon, one law enforcement official told CNN.
A partial fingerprint and DNA recovered early in the search for the suspect have so far not yielded matches when compared against law enforcement databases, according to a law enforcement official.
A backpack believed to belong to the suspect had been recovered in Central Park. It contained money from the Monopoly board game and a Tommy Hilfiger jacket, law enforcement officials briefed on the matter said.
Thompson’s killing prompted an outpouring of condemnation and hostility towards the health care industry, sympathy for his killer and other industry CEOs to step up security.
